Programmatic access users in IAM is required if you want to control or access your AWS services from the command line via AWS CLI tools. A programmatic access user will be given AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key, which your AWS CLI tools will use to authenticate to AWS and execute your commands.

Programmatic access user for AWS can be created from the IAM dashboard.

1. Go to IAM section in your AWS Console.

   Related: Identity and Access Management

   

2. Click on the Users link on the sidebar.

   
3. Click on the Add user button to add a new user.

   
4. Enter User name for the user.

   
5. Tick on Access key – Programmatic access checkbox in Access type section.

   
6. Click on the Next: Permissions button.

   
7. Configure access or permission for the user.

   You choose any of the available methods to assign permissions to the user, but we'll be using the Attach Existing policies directly method in this example.

   1. Click on Attach Existing policies directly tab.

      
   2. Tick on the checkbox of the access policies that you want to assign to the user.

      
8. Click on the Next: Tags button.

   
9. Add tags to the user (optional) and click on Next: Review buttonw.

   
10. Review the summary of the user and click on the Create user button.

    
11. Click Download .csv button to download the login details.

    
12. Configure awscli using the details in the file downloaded csv file.

    Related: How to configure AWS CLI tool