Troubleshooting Amazon Rekognition identity and access

Use the following information to help you diagnose and fix common issues that you might encounter when working with Amazon Rekognition and IAM.

I am not authorized to perform an action in Amazon Rekognition

If the AWS Management Console tells you that you're not authorized to perform an action, then you must contact your administrator for assistance. Your administrator is the person that provided you with your sign-in credentials.

The following example error occurs when the mateojackson IAM user tries to use the console to view details about a widget but does not have rekognition:GetWidget permissions.

User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/mateojackson is not authorized to perform: rekognition:GetWidget on resource: my-example-widget

In this case, Mateo asks his administrator to update his policies to allow him to access the my-example-widget resource using the rekognition:GetWidget action.

I am not authorized to perform iam:PassRole

If you receive an error that you're not authorized to perform the iam:PassRole action, your policies must be updated to allow you to pass a role to Amazon Rekognition.

Some AWS services allow you to pass an existing role to that service instead of creating a new service role or service-linked role. To do this, you must have permissions to pass the role to the service.

The following example error occurs when an IAM user named marymajor tries to use the console to perform an action in Amazon Rekognition. However, the action requires the service to have permissions that are granted by a service role. Mary does not have permissions to pass the role to the service.

User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/marymajor is not authorized to perform: iam:PassRole

In this case, Mary's policies must be updated to allow her to perform the iam:PassRole action.

If you need help, contact your AWS administrator. Your administrator is the person who provided you with your sign-in credentials.

I'm an administrator and want to allow others to access Amazon Rekognition

To allow others to access Amazon Rekognition, you must create an IAM entity (user or role) for the person or application that needs access. They will use the credentials for that entity to access AWS. You must then attach a policy to the entity that grants them the correct permissions in Amazon Rekognition.

To get started right away, see Creating your first IAM delegated user and group in the IAM User Guide.

I want to allow people outside of my AWS account to access my Amazon Rekognition resources

You can create a role that users in other accounts or people outside of your organization can use to access your resources. You can specify who is trusted to assume the role. For services that support resource-based policies or access control lists (ACLs), you can use those policies to grant people access to your resources.

To learn more, consult the following:

• To learn whether Amazon Rekognition supports these features, see How Amazon Rekognition works with IAM.

• To learn how to provide access to your resources across AWS accounts that you own, see Providing access to an IAM user in another AWS account that you own in the IAM User Guide.

• To learn how to provide access to your resources to third-party AWS accounts, see Providing access to AWS accounts owned by third parties in the IAM User Guide.

• To learn how to provide access through identity federation, see Providing access to externally authenticated users (identity federation) in the IAM User Guide.

• To learn the difference between using roles and resource-based policies for cross-account access, see How IAM roles differ from resource-based policies in the IAM User Guide.