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@dguido dguido commented Aug 3, 2025

Summary

This PR adds support for automatically reading AWS credentials from the standard ~/.aws/credentials file, making Algo behave like other AWS tools and improving the user experience.

Features

  • ✅ Automatically reads credentials from ~/.aws/credentials
  • ✅ Supports AWS_PROFILE environment variable for profile selection
  • ✅ Supports AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE for custom credential file locations
  • ✅ Adds support for temporary credentials with session tokens
  • ✅ Maintains backward compatibility with existing methods
  • ✅ Follows AWS standard credential precedence order

Credential Precedence (highest to lowest)

  1. Command-line variables (-e aws_access_key=...)
  2. Environment variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY)
  3. AWS credentials file (~/.aws/credentials)
  4. Interactive prompts (if nothing else is found)

Implementation Details

  • Integrated credential discovery directly into prompts.yml for clarity
  • Fixed variable naming to match existing code conventions
  • Added no_log: true to prevent credential leakage in logs
  • Handles missing files gracefully with errors='ignore'
  • Supports session tokens for temporary credentials

Testing

Includes comprehensive test suite (tests/test-aws-credentials.yml) that verifies:

  • Environment variable precedence
  • Command-line variable precedence
  • Default profile reading
  • Custom profile selection
  • Session token support

Documentation

  • Added detailed AWS credentials guide (docs/aws-credentials.md)
  • Updated EC2 setup documentation to mention automatic credential detection
  • Includes security considerations and troubleshooting tips

Credits

Based on #14460 by @lefth with significant improvements to address implementation issues.

Fixes #14382

Note: This is a clean version of #14777 without unintended ansible-lint changes.

- Automatically reads AWS credentials from ~/.aws/credentials
- Supports AWS_PROFILE and AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE environment variables
- Adds support for temporary credentials with session tokens
- Maintains backward compatibility with existing credential methods
- Follows standard AWS credential precedence order

Based on PR #14460 by @lefth with the following improvements:
- Fixed variable naming to match existing code (access_key vs aws_access_key)
- Added session token support for temporary credentials
- Integrated credential discovery directly into prompts.yml
- Added comprehensive tests
- Added documentation

Closes #14382
@dguido dguido requested a review from jackivanov as a code owner August 3, 2025 07:01
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claude bot commented Aug 3, 2025

Claude finished @dguido's task —— View job


AWS Credentials PR Review

I've conducted a comprehensive code review of this AWS credentials implementation. Here's my detailed analysis:

Review Tasks:

  • Analyze main implementation in prompts.yml
  • Review security practices and credential handling
  • Evaluate test coverage and quality
  • Check documentation completeness
  • Assess performance considerations
  • Look for potential bugs or edge cases
  • Provide final recommendations

🎯 Overall Assessment: EXCELLENT

This is a well-implemented feature that follows AWS best practices and maintains strong security standards. The code quality is high with comprehensive testing and documentation.

Strengths

Security Excellence

  • Perfect credential handling: All sensitive operations use no_log: true (lines 22, 66 in prompts.yml)
  • Proper precedence order: Command-line → Environment → File → Prompts (exactly matches AWS SDK behavior)
  • Safe file operations: Uses errors='ignore' to handle missing files gracefully (lines 18-20)
  • Session token support: Properly handles temporary credentials for enhanced security

Code Quality

  • Clean implementation: Logic is well-structured and readable
  • Robust error handling: Graceful fallbacks when files don't exist
  • Proper fact management: Clear variable naming with _ prefix for internal vars
  • Ansible best practices: Uses delegate_to: localhost and proper conditionals

Test Coverage

  • Comprehensive test suite: Tests all precedence scenarios in test-aws-credentials.yml
  • Edge case coverage: Tests environment variables, command-line args, profiles, and session tokens
  • Realistic scenarios: Uses proper file permissions (600) and directory structure

Documentation

  • Complete user guide: Clear aws-credentials.md with examples and troubleshooting
  • Integration documentation: Updated EC2 setup guide appropriately
  • Security guidance: Includes security considerations and tool recommendations

🔍 Minor Observations

Performance Considerations

  1. File I/O optimization: The implementation reads credentials file once per profile lookup, which is efficient
  2. Minimal overhead: Only reads file when needed (command-line and env vars not present)
  3. No performance concerns: The approach scales well

Potential Edge Cases

  1. File permissions: While documented, could add a check for overly permissive credential files
  2. Profile validation: Could validate that requested profile exists before proceeding
  3. Path expansion: Uses lookup('env', 'HOME') which is reliable but could handle edge cases

Code Enhancement Opportunities

  1. Error messaging: Could provide more specific error messages when credential file is malformed
  2. Validation: Could add basic format validation for access keys
  3. Logging: Could add debug logging for credential discovery process (with no_log: false for non-sensitive info)

🏗️ Architecture Review

Integration Points

  • CloudFormation task: Properly updated to use session tokens (cloudformation.yml:6)
  • Variable consistency: All credential variables follow consistent naming
  • Backward compatibility: Existing deployments will continue working unchanged

Security Architecture

  • Credential isolation: Temporary variables are properly scoped
  • No credential leakage: All sensitive operations protected by no_log: true
  • Standard compliance: Follows AWS credential provider chain exactly

🧪 Test Quality Analysis

The test suite is exceptionally thorough:

  • ✅ Tests precedence order correctly
  • ✅ Creates realistic file structure with proper permissions
  • ✅ Tests both default and custom profiles
  • ✅ Verifies session token handling
  • ✅ Includes proper cleanup

Test file structure (test-aws-credentials.yml:51-68):

path: /tmp/test-aws
mode: '0700'  # Directory
credentials file mode: '0600'  # File

This matches AWS CLI behavior perfectly.

📋 Recommendations

Immediate Actions

  • Ready to merge: No blocking issues found
  • Security approved: Meets enterprise security standards
  • Testing complete: Comprehensive test coverage

Future Enhancements (Optional)

  1. Add credential validation: Check access key format (AKIA... pattern)
  2. Enhanced error messages: More specific feedback for malformed files
  3. Debug logging: Add ansible -vvv compatible debug output
  4. File permission warnings: Warn if credentials file is too permissive

Documentation Suggestions

  • Consider adding AWS Vault integration example
  • Could mention IAM role alternatives for EC2 instances

🔒 Security Verdict

APPROVED - This implementation follows security best practices:

  • ✅ No credential exposure in logs
  • ✅ Proper file permission handling
  • ✅ Standard AWS precedence order
  • ✅ Session token support for temporary credentials
  • ✅ Graceful error handling without information disclosure

🎯 Final Recommendation

APPROVE FOR MERGE - This is a high-quality implementation that:

  • Enhances user experience significantly
  • Maintains security standards
  • Includes comprehensive testing
  • Provides excellent documentation
  • Follows AWS best practices

The code is production-ready and represents a valuable improvement to the Algo project.


@jackivanov jackivanov merged commit 8ee15e6 into master Aug 3, 2025
23 checks passed
@jackivanov jackivanov deleted the feature/aws-credentials-clean branch August 3, 2025 21:07
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algo should be able to run unattended, with more options and authentication read from variables or files
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