Last updated: Sep 14, 2021
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The "You must specify a region" error occurs when we haven't configured the
region for the AWS profile we're using, nor have we passed the --region
parameter when running the command.
To solve the "You must specify a region" error we have to set a region the command applies to.
We can specify a region for a single command by passing the --region
parameter:
aws ec2 describe-instances --region us-east-1
To set a region that applies to all commands run by the AWS profile, we have
to use the aws configure set region
command:
aws configure set region us-east-1 --profile amplify-user-1
In this case, we've set the region of the amplify-user-1
profile to
us-east-1
.
The aws configure set region
command writes the region to the AWS config file.
On linux
and macOS
the config file has the path of ~/.aws/config
:
On windows
the config file has the path of C:\Users\USERNAME\.aws\config
.
To check the region that's currently configured for a profile, you can run the
aws configure list
command:
aws configure list --profile amplify-user-1
The optimal way to configure the region for your AWS CLI profile is with the
aws configure set region
command because it applies to all of the AWS CLI
commands you issue with that profile.
You can then easily override the region for a specific command by passing the
--region
parameter.
The --region
parameter has higher precedence than the setting in your config
file, and is useful for one-off commands.