There is a growing list of configuration options for the boto library. Many of these options can be passed into the constructors for top-level objects such as connections. Some options, such as credentials, can also be read from environment variables (e.g. AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SECURITY_TOKEN and AWS_PROFILE). It is also possible to manage these options in a central place through the use of boto config files.
A boto config file is a text file formatted like an .ini configuration file that specifies values for options that control the behavior of the boto library. In Unix/Linux systems, on startup, the boto library looks for configuration files in the following locations and in the following order:
In Windows, create a text file that has any name (e.g. boto.config). It’s recommended that you put this file in your user folder. Then set a user environment variable named BOTO_CONFIG to the full path of that file.
The options in the config file are merged into a single, in-memory configuration that is available as boto.config. The boto.pyami.config.Config class is a subclass of the standard Python ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser object and inherits all of the methods of that object. In addition, the boto Config class defines additional methods that are described on the PyamiConfigMethods page.
An example boto config file might look like:
[Credentials]
aws_access_key_id = <your_access_key_here>
aws_secret_access_key = <your_secret_key_here>
The following sections and options are currently recognized within the boto config file.
The Credentials section is used to specify the AWS credentials used for all boto requests. The order of precedence for authentication credentials is:
This section defines the following options: aws_access_key_id and aws_secret_access_key. The former being your AWS key id and the latter being the secret key.
For example:
[profile name_goes_here]
aws_access_key_id = <access key for this profile>
aws_secret_access_key = <secret key for this profile>
[Credentials]
aws_access_key_id = <your default access key>
aws_secret_access_key = <your default secret key>
Please notice that quote characters are not used to either side of the ‘=’ operator even when both your AWS access key ID and secret key are strings.
If you have multiple AWS keypairs that you use for different purposes, use the profile style shown above. You can set an arbitrary number of profiles within your configuration files and then reference them by name when you instantiate your connection. If you specify a profile that does not exist in the configuration, the keys used under the [Credentials] heading will be applied by default.
The shared credentials file in ~/.aws/credentials uses a slightly different format. For example:
[default]
aws_access_key_id = <your default access key>
aws_secret_access_key = <your default secret key>
[name_goes_here]
aws_access_key_id = <access key for this profile>
aws_secret_access_key = <secret key for this profile>
[another_profile]
aws_access_key_id = <access key for this profile>
aws_secret_access_key = <secret key for this profile>
aws_security_token = <optional security token for this profile>
For greater security, the secret key can be stored in a keyring and retrieved via the keyring package. To use a keyring, use keyring, rather than aws_secret_access_key:
[Credentials]
aws_access_key_id = <your access key>
keyring = <keyring name>
To use a keyring, you must have the Python keyring package installed and in the Python path. To learn about setting up keyrings, see the keyring documentation
Credentials can also be supplied for a Eucalyptus service:
[Credentials]
euca_access_key_id = <your access key>
euca_secret_access_key = <your secret key>
Finally, this section is also be used to provide credentials for the Internet Archive API:
[Credentials]
ia_access_key_id = <your access key>
ia_secret_access_key = <your secret key>
The Boto section is used to specify options that control the operation of boto itself. This section defines the following options:
| debug: | Controls the level of debug messages that will be printed by the boto library. The following values are defined: 0 - no debug messages are printed
1 - basic debug messages from boto are printed
2 - all boto debugging messages plus request/response messages from httplib
|
|---|---|
| proxy: | The name of the proxy host to use for connecting to AWS. |
| proxy_port: | The port number to use to connect to the proxy host. |
| proxy_user: | The user name to use when authenticating with proxy host. |
| proxy_pass: | The password to use when authenticating with proxy host. |
| num_retries: | The number of times to retry failed requests to an AWS server. If boto receives an error from AWS, it will attempt to recover and retry the request. The default number of retries is 5 but you can change the default with this option. |
For example:
[Boto]
debug = 0
num_retries = 10
proxy = myproxy.com
proxy_port = 8080
proxy_user = foo
proxy_pass = bar
| connection_stale_duration: | |
|---|---|
| Amount of time to wait in seconds before a connection will stop getting reused. AWS will disconnect connections which have been idle for 180 seconds. | |
| is_secure: | Is the connection over SSL. This setting will overide passed in values. |
| https_validate_certificates: | |
| Validate HTTPS certificates. This is on by default | |
| ca_certificates_file: | |
| Location of CA certificates or the keyword “system”. Using the system keyword lets boto get out of the way and makes the SSL certificate validation the responsibility the underlying SSL implementation provided by the system. | |
| http_socket_timeout: | |
| Timeout used to overwrite the system default socket timeout for httplib . | |
| send_crlf_after_proxy_auth_headers: | |
| Change line ending behaviour with proxies. For more details see this discussion | |
| endpoints_path: | Allows customizing the regions/endpoints available in Boto. Provide an absolute path to a custom JSON file, which gets merged into the defaults. (This can also be specified with the BOTO_ENDPOINTS environment variable instead.) |
These settings will default to:
[Boto]
connection_stale_duration = 180
is_secure = True
https_validate_certificates = True
ca_certificates_file = cacerts.txt
http_socket_timeout = 60
send_crlf_after_proxy_auth_headers = False
endpoints_path = /path/to/my/boto/endpoints.json
You can control the timeouts and number of retries used when retrieving information from the Metadata Service (this is used for retrieving credentials for IAM roles on EC2 instances):
| metadata_service_timeout: | |
|---|---|
| Number of seconds until requests to the metadata service will timeout (float). | |
| metadata_service_num_attempts: | |
| Number of times to attempt to retrieve information from the metadata service before giving up (int). | |
These settings will default to:
[Boto]
metadata_service_timeout = 1.0
metadata_service_num_attempts = 1
This section is also used for specifying endpoints for non-AWS services such as Eucalyptus and Walrus.
| eucalyptus_host: | |
|---|---|
| Select a default endpoint host for eucalyptus | |
| walrus_host: | Select a default host for Walrus |
For example:
[Boto]
eucalyptus_host = somehost.example.com
walrus_host = somehost.example.com
Finally, the Boto section is used to set defaults versions for many AWS services
AutoScale settings:
options: :autoscale_version: Set the API version :autoscale_endpoint: Endpoint to use :autoscale_region_name: Default region to use
For example:
[Boto]
autoscale_version = 2011-01-01
autoscale_endpoint = autoscaling.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
autoscale_region_name = us-west-2
Cloudformation settings can also be defined:
| cfn_version: | Cloud formation API version |
|---|---|
| cfn_region_name: | |
| Default region name | |
| cfn_region_endpoint: | |
| Default endpoint | |
For example:
[Boto]
cfn_version = 2010-05-15
cfn_region_name = us-west-2
cfn_region_endpoint = cloudformation.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Cloudsearch settings:
| cs_region_name: | Default cloudsearch region |
|---|---|
| cs_region_endpoint: | |
| Default cloudsearch endpoint | |
For example:
[Boto]
cs_region_name = us-west-2
cs_region_endpoint = cloudsearch.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Cloudwatch settings:
| cloudwatch_version: | |
|---|---|
| Cloudwatch API version | |
| cloudwatch_region_name: | |
| Default region name | |
| cloudwatch_region_endpoint: | |
| Default endpoint | |
For example:
[Boto]
cloudwatch_version = 2010-08-01
cloudwatch_region_name = us-west-2
cloudwatch_region_endpoint = monitoring.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
EC2 settings:
| ec2_version: | EC2 API version |
|---|---|
| ec2_region_name: | |
| Default region name | |
| ec2_region_endpoint: | |
| Default endpoint | |
For example:
[Boto]
ec2_version = 2012-12-01
ec2_region_name = us-west-2
ec2_region_endpoint = ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
ELB settings:
| elb_version: | ELB API version |
|---|---|
| elb_region_name: | |
| Default region name | |
| elb_region_endpoint: | |
| Default endpoint | |
For example:
[Boto]
elb_version = 2012-06-01
elb_region_name = us-west-2
elb_region_endpoint = elasticloadbalancing.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
EMR settings:
| emr_version: | EMR API version |
|---|---|
| emr_region_name: | |
| Default region name | |
| emr_region_endpoint: | |
| Default endpoint | |
For example:
[Boto]
emr_version = 2009-03-31
emr_region_name = us-west-2
emr_region_endpoint = elasticmapreduce.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Even if you have your boto config setup, you can also have credentials and options stored in environmental variables or you can explicitly pass them to method calls i.e.:
>>> boto.ec2.connect_to_region(
... 'us-west-2',
... aws_access_key_id='foo',
... aws_secret_access_key='bar')
In these cases where these options can be found in more than one place boto will first use the explicitly supplied arguments, if none found it will then look for them amidst environment variables and if that fails it will use the ones in boto config.
If you are using notifications for boto.pyami, you can specify the email details through the following variables.
| smtp_from: | Used as the sender in notification emails. |
|---|---|
| smtp_to: | Destination to which emails should be sent |
| smtp_host: | Host to connect to when sending notification emails. |
| smtp_port: | Port to connect to when connecting to the :smtp_host: |
Default values are:
[notification]
smtp_from = boto
smtp_to = None
smtp_host = localhost
smtp_port = 25
smtp_tls = True
smtp_user = john
smtp_pass = hunter2
The SWF section allows you to configure the default region to be used for the Amazon Simple Workflow service.
| region: | Set the default region |
|---|
Example:
[SWF]
region = us-west-2
The Pyami section is used to configure the working directory for PyAMI.
| working_dir: | Working directory used by PyAMI |
|---|
Example:
[Pyami]
working_dir = /home/foo/
The DB section is used to configure access to databases through the boto.sdb.db.manager.get_manager() function.
| db_type: | Type of the database. Current allowed values are SimpleDB and XML. |
|---|---|
| db_user: | AWS access key id. |
| db_passwd: | AWS secret access key. |
| db_name: | Database that will be connected to. |
| db_table: | Table name :note: This doesn’t appear to be used. |
| db_host: | Host to connect to |
| db_port: | Port to connect to |
| enable_ssl: | Use SSL |
More examples:
[DB]
db_type = SimpleDB
db_user = <aws access key id>
db_passwd = <aws secret access key>
db_name = my_domain
db_table = table
db_host = sdb.amazonaws.com
enable_ssl = True
debug = True
[DB_TestBasic]
db_type = SimpleDB
db_user = <another aws access key id>
db_passwd = <another aws secret access key>
db_name = basic_domain
db_port = 1111
This section is used to configure SimpleDB
| region: | Set the region to which SDB should connect |
|---|
Example:
[SDB]
region = us-west-2
This section is used to configure DynamoDB
| region: | Choose the default region |
|---|---|
| validate_checksums: | |
| Check checksums returned by DynamoDB | |
Example:
[DynamoDB]
region = us-west-2
validate_checksums = True