Why am I getting a permissions error when attempting to auto_accept vpc peering in Terraform?

Question

I am trying to create a VPC peer between accounts and auto accepting it but it fails with permissions error.

Here are the providers in the main.tf

provider "aws" {
  region                   = "${var.region}"
  shared_credentials_file  = "/Users/<username>/.aws/credentials"
  profile                  = "sandbox"
}

data "aws_caller_identity" "current" { }

Here is the vpc_peer module:

resource "aws_vpc_peering_connection" "peer" {
      peer_owner_id              = "${var.peer_owner_id}"
      peer_vpc_id                = "${var.peer_vpc_id}"
      vpc_id                     = "${var.vpc_id}"
      auto_accept                = "${var.auto_accept}"

      accepter {
        allow_remote_vpc_dns_resolution = true
      }

      requester {
        allow_remote_vpc_dns_resolution = true
      }

      tags {
        Name = "VPC Peering between ${var.peer_vpc_id} and ${var.vpc_id}"
      }
}

Here is the module execution in the maint.ft

module "peering" {
  source = "../modules/vpc_peer"

  region        = "${var.region}"
  peer_owner_id = "<management account number>"
  peer_vpc_id   = "<vpc-********>"
  vpc_id        = "${module.network.vpc_id}"
  auto_accept   = "true"
}

Now the IAM user I am using from the "sandbox" provider has permissions for VPC peering in the VPC which is in the management account.

I used the following procedure from AWS: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/tutorial_cross-account-with-roles.html

Unfortunately I keep failing with the following error:

1 error(s) occurred:

* aws_vpc_peering_connection.peer: Unable to accept VPC Peering Connection: OperationNotPermitted: User 651267440910 cannot accept peering pcx-f9c55290
    status code: 400, request id: cfbe1163-241e-413b-a8de-d2bca19726e5

Any ideas?

Nathaniel Assis Nathaniel Assis · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-07T20:05:22

I managed to run a local_exec which accepts the peer.

Here is an example:

resource "aws_vpc_peering_connection" "peer" {

  peer_owner_id              = "${var.peer_owner_id}"
  peer_vpc_id                = "${var.peer_vpc_id}"
  vpc_id                     = "${var.vpc_id}"

  provisioner "local-exec" {
    command = "aws ec2 accept-vpc-peering-connection --vpc-peering-connection-id=${aws_vpc_peering_connection.peer.id} --region=${var.region} --profile=${var.profile}"

  }

  tags {
    Name = "VPC Peering between ${var.peer_vpc_id} and ${var.vpc_id}"
  }
}

Why am I getting a permissions error when attempting to auto_accept vpc peering in Terraform?

3 Answers