boto3 client NoRegionError: You must specify a region error only sometimes

Question:

I have a boto3 client :

boto3.client('kms')

But it happens on new machines, They open and close dynamically.

    if endpoint is None:
        if region_name is None:
            # Raise a more specific error message that will give
            # better guidance to the user what needs to happen.
            raise NoRegionError()

Why is this happening? and why only part of the time?

Asked By: WebQube

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Answers:

One way or another you must tell boto3 in which region you wish the kms client to be created. This could be done explicitly using the region_name parameter as in:

kms = boto3.client('kms', region_name='us-west-2')

or you can have a default region associated with your profile in your ~/.aws/config file as in:

[default]
region=us-west-2

or you can use an environment variable as in:

export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-2

but you do need to tell boto3 which region to use.

Answered By: garnaat

I believe, by default, boto picks the region which is set in aws cli. You can run command #aws configure and press enter (it shows what creds you have set in aws cli with region)twice to confirm your region.

Answered By: josh eversman

you can also set environment variables in the script itself, rather than passing region_name parameter

os.environ['AWS_DEFAULT_REGION'] = 'your_region_name'

case sensitivity may matter.

Answered By: Abhishek Garg
os.environ['AWS_DEFAULT_REGION'] = 'your_region_name'

In my case sensitivity mattered.

Answered By: Anthony G

For Python 2 I have found that the boto3 library does not source the region from the ~/.aws/config if the region is defined in a different profile to default.
So you have to define it in the session creation.

session = boto3.Session(
    profile_name='NotDefault',
    region_name='ap-southeast-2'
)

print(session.available_profiles)

client = session.client(
    'ec2'
)

Where my ~/.aws/config file looks like this:

[default]
region=ap-southeast-2

[NotDefault]
region=ap-southeast-2

I do this because I use different profiles for different logins to AWS, Personal and Work.

Answered By: David Edson

For those using CloudFormation template. You can set AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment variable using UserData and AWS::Region. For example,

MyInstance1:
    Type: AWS::EC2::Instance                
    Properties:                           
        ImageId: ami-04b9e92b5572fa0d1 #ubuntu
        InstanceType: t2.micro
        UserData: 
            Fn::Base64: !Sub |
                    #!/bin/bash -x

                    echo "export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=${AWS::Region}" >> /etc/profile
Answered By: Marcin

Alternatively you can run the following (aws cli)

aws configure --profile $PROFILE_NAME

it’ll prompt you for the region.

notice in ~/.aws/config it’s:

[default]
region = ap-southeast-1
output = json

[profile prod]
region = ap-southeast-1
output = json

[profile profile name] in the square brackets

Answered By: altimit

If you are using lambdas, then you would likely want to use the region the lambda is deployed in.
You can use the following

import boto3
import json
import os

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    region = os.environ['AWS_REGION']
    print('Lambda region: ', region)
    kms = boto3.client('kms', region_name=region)
Answered By: VenVig

We have the configured regions stored in our ~/.aws/config file. Here is a pure python way of reading the correct region from this file based on the profile name:

def get_aws_region(profile_name: str) -> str:
  config = configparser.ConfigParser()
  config.read(f"{os.environ['HOME']}/.aws/config")
  profile_section = config[f"profile {profile_name}"]
  return profile_section["region"]
Answered By: Brandon

regions = [
            'eu-north-1', 'ap-south-1', 'eu-west-3', 'eu-west-2',
            'eu-west-1', 'ap-northeast-3', 'ap-northeast-2'
            'ap-northeast-1', 'sa-east-1', 'ca-central-1', 
            'ap-southeast-2', 'eu-central-1', 'us-east-1', 'us-east-2',
            'us-west-1', 'us-west-2']
for r in regions:
   kms = boto3.client('kms', region_name= r)

Answered By: Harshal

If you use AWS Lambda your code will work while you deploy it,
because the Lambda is deployed in a specific region.

Answered By: Elad Rubi

you could always set it to the same region that the EC2 is in if you like. This is with bash but you could easily reproduce this in python:

EC2_AVAIL_ZONE=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/placement/availability-zone)
EC2_REGION="`echo $EC2_AVAIL_ZONE | sed -e 's:([0-9][0-9]*)[a-z]*$:\1:'`"
# if unset, set it:
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="${AWS_DEFAULT_REGION:-$EC2_REGION}"

python:

import os
import re
from subprocess import check_output

EC2_AVAIL_ZONE = check_output(["curl", "-s", "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/placement/availability-zone"]).decode().strip()
EC2_REGION = re.sub(r"^(w{2}-w{3,10}-[0-9][0-9]*)[a-z]*$", r"1", EC2_AVAIL_ZONE)
# if unset, set it:
os.environ["AWS_DEFAULT_REGION"] = os.getenv("AWS_DEFAULT_REGION", EC2_REGION)
Answered By: Alex L

In case you are using Linux, an easy way is that you can create the config file (You should name it config without any extension) at ~/.aws (if .aws directory does not exist create it at user home ~ ) and in that config file add a region just like this.

[default]
region=whatever-aws-region

Answered By: Hadi Mir