Handling permission error when describing task definition

[sota1235]

Hello
I'm one of the developer using this awesome software.

When I tried to use this software in my software, I faced the problem below.

• Try to deploy ECS task definition with --task option
• Then, I got error message 'Unknown task definition arn: {my task definition name}'
• But it's appear on AWS console

As a result of my investigation, the cause is

• When receiving permission error from boto3 client, it will be coverted to UnknownTaskDefinitionError
  • https://github.com/fabfuel/ecs-deploy/blob/develop/ecs_deploy/ecs.py#L41-L48
• As a result, I misunderstood it is the error because of my wrong command option or something else

So, my proposal is here.

• 1st idea: When catching ClientError, parse that error and if it's permission error, change error message
• 2nd idea: Not catching error
  • it seems that some of codes doesn't catch error from boto3 and to be honest, it's really useful for me when my IAM role's permission was wrong

If you need, I can send a PR. But before that, I want to hear feedback for my proposal.
Best,

[fabfuel]

Hi @sota1235 & thanks for your issue description!

If I remember correctly, the error identification in boto3 is not too transparent, and some specific cases would need to be parsed from the error message (text) or are even not specifically identifiable. But there is a good chance, that this changed by now.

I agree, that the described scenario can be misleading, as the error message suggests, that the TD does not exist - independent from permissions.

I have two follow up questions:

1. would you please briefly describe your permissions setup? What kind of restrictions did you apply to the task definitions and/or user?
2. Do you have the original error object/details of this operation which comes from boto3? What does the ClientError exactly look like?

Thanks!
Fabian

[brunocascio]

I was facing the same issue. I solved adding ecs:RunTask permissions to the IAM User