Create an IAM Role to use with CodePipeline

When creating a new CodePipeline, an IAM role is required, but AWS does not have a managed role to easily select from when creating new pipelines, specifically from CloudForamtion. To generate a new role the web console is needed to create a new pipeline and generate a new role. This article describes how to use the generated role to easily create a new IAM role to use with CodePipeline.

Create a New IAM Role

According to AWS documentation it is recommended to use the console method of generating a new role when creating a new CodePipeline. After creating this role they recommend reusing this role for new pipelines.

After following recommendations by AWS, a new role is created. We can use that role template to create our own roles for future use.

First, we must create our role with a trust policy. Save the following snippet as trust-policy.json:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": [
          "codepipeline.amazonaws.com",
          "cloudformation.amazonaws.com"
        ]
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

Run the following CLI command to create a new role named CodePipelineRole:

aws iam create-role --role-name CodePipelineRole --assume-role-policy-document file://trust-policy.json

Next attach save the following snippet as policy.json:

{
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Action": [
                "iam:PassRole"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEqualsIfExists": {
                    "iam:PassedToService": [
                        "cloudformation.amazonaws.com",
                        "elasticbeanstalk.amazonaws.com",
                        "ec2.amazonaws.com",
                        "ecs-tasks.amazonaws.com"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "codecommit:CancelUploadArchive",
                "codecommit:GetBranch",
                "codecommit:GetCommit",
                "codecommit:GetUploadArchiveStatus",
                "codecommit:UploadArchive"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "codedeploy:CreateDeployment",
                "codedeploy:GetApplication",
                "codedeploy:GetApplicationRevision",
                "codedeploy:GetDeployment",
                "codedeploy:GetDeploymentConfig",
                "codedeploy:RegisterApplicationRevision"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "codestar-connections:UseConnection"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "elasticbeanstalk:*",
                "ec2:*",
                "elasticloadbalancing:*",
                "autoscaling:*",
                "cloudwatch:*",
                "s3:*",
                "sns:*",
                "cloudformation:*",
                "rds:*",
                "sqs:*",
                "ecs:*"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "lambda:InvokeFunction",
                "lambda:ListFunctions"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "opsworks:CreateDeployment",
                "opsworks:DescribeApps",
                "opsworks:DescribeCommands",
                "opsworks:DescribeDeployments",
                "opsworks:DescribeInstances",
                "opsworks:DescribeStacks",
                "opsworks:UpdateApp",
                "opsworks:UpdateStack"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "cloudformation:CreateStack",
                "cloudformation:DeleteStack",
                "cloudformation:DescribeStacks",
                "cloudformation:UpdateStack",
                "cloudformation:CreateChangeSet",
                "cloudformation:DeleteChangeSet",
                "cloudformation:DescribeChangeSet",
                "cloudformation:ExecuteChangeSet",
                "cloudformation:SetStackPolicy",
                "cloudformation:ValidateTemplate"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "codebuild:BatchGetBuilds",
                "codebuild:StartBuild",
                "codebuild:BatchGetBuildBatches",
                "codebuild:StartBuildBatch"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "devicefarm:ListProjects",
                "devicefarm:ListDevicePools",
                "devicefarm:GetRun",
                "devicefarm:GetUpload",
                "devicefarm:CreateUpload",
                "devicefarm:ScheduleRun"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "servicecatalog:ListProvisioningArtifacts",
                "servicecatalog:CreateProvisioningArtifact",
                "servicecatalog:DescribeProvisioningArtifact",
                "servicecatalog:DeleteProvisioningArtifact",
                "servicecatalog:UpdateProduct"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "cloudformation:ValidateTemplate"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ecr:DescribeImages"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "states:DescribeExecution",
                "states:DescribeStateMachine",
                "states:StartExecution"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "appconfig:StartDeployment",
                "appconfig:StopDeployment",
                "appconfig:GetDeployment"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ],
    "Version": "2012-10-17"
}

Run the CLI command to attach the policy to the role:

aws iam put-role-policy --role-name CodePipelineRole --policy-name CodePipelinePolicy --policy-document file://policy.json

If successful this command will not return anything. To inspect a role, use:

aws iam get-role --role-name CodePipelineRole

And to get the attached specific permissions for a policy:

aws iam get-role-policy --role-name CodePipelineRole --policy-name CodePipelinePolicy

Conclusion

By creating this required role up front, we can now use our new role with any new CodePipelines. Use this ARN when creating new CodePipelines with either console, CLI, or CloudFormation.