aws_longer

aws_longer is a tool to replace assume-role with a few significant benefits:

1. MFA tokens need only be entered once every 36 hours.
2. Sessions can be shared across terminals, and persist across reboots.

Both of the above are accomplished by storing the session credentials, and assumed credentials in the user's keychain.

Installation

Install this package via:

pip install aws_longer

Assuming a Role

aws_longer role ROLENAME AWS_ACCOUNT

The above will open a new shell setting the appropriate AWS_ environment variables. If this is the first time you are running this command, or it has been 36 hours since you last input your MFA token, then you will be prompted to input your MFA token.

AWS_ACCOUNT can either be an AWS account ID, or an alias to an AWS account ID.

If you'd like to prevent opening a new shell, you can instead run, but be careful because if there are any errors, the result will terminate your shell-program:

exec aws_longer role ROLENAME AWS_ACCOUNT

Using the Temporary Session

Rather than assuming a specific role, one can directly utilize the 36-hour temporary session via:

aws_longer

Using this temporary session is beneficial if, for example, you require MFA to assume roles, and you'd like to be able to run terraform apply with a provider that assumes a specific role.

AWS Account ID Alias

AWS account ID aliases can be defined in ~/.aws/accounts, which is a JSON file of the following format:

{
  "default": "123456789012",
  "staging": "123456789012",
  "production": "123456789012"
}

This aliasing format is the same as was used in assume-role in order to ease transitioning.

Avoid token prompting

If you happen to use a program to generate your MFA token, you might prefer to pass the token directly as part of the command invocation instead of via a prompt to STDIN. Do that via:

aws_longer --mfa-token role ROLENAME AWS_ACCOUNT

In said cases, the MFA token will only be used if it's necessary to do so.