s3fs with aws ec2 instance and using instance profiles

Question

As far as I can tell the only way to mount an s3 bucket with s3fs is to use an `accesskey:secretkey` specified in a file with various file locations supported. However, if I'm an ec2 instance, in the local s3 account, with an instance profile, I just want to use the instance profile credentials that are available. Does anyone know of a way to use an instance profile, and not have to set credentials in the local file system? If not, is anyone working on supporting this feature going forward? Thanks

Accepted Answer

Once/if you have a role that is attached to the EC2 instance, you can then add the following entry in `/etc/fstab` to automatically mount the S3 bucket on boot:

```
s3fs#bucketname /PATHtoLocalMount fuse _netdev,iam_role=nameofiamrolenoquotes
```

Naturally, you have to have `s3fs` installed (as you do judging from the question), and the role policy must grant the appropriate (probably full) access to the S3 bucket. This is great in the sense that no IAM credentials need to be stored on the instance (=safer, because the role access cannot be used outside the instance attached to the role, while the IAM credentials can).

s3fs with aws ec2 instance and using instance profiles

Solution

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