AWS error "Unable to locate credentials"

Question

I have had multiple ec2 instances encountering an "Unable to locate credentials" error today when trying to execute the AWS CLI despite the instance being launched with an IAM role that grants appropriate policies and had worked without issue prior to today.

Answer 1

If you add --debug to the command line you will be able to see where the CLI is looking for credentials which may help.

My guess is that they're overloaded, and made the design decision to fail quickly rather than queueing requests.