AWS Stack update error: Requires capabilities : [CAPABILITY_IAM]

Question

When creating a stack with CloudFormation, I get this error:

Stack update error: Requires capabilities : [CAPABILITY_IAM]

I can't find a template for adding CAPABILITIES_IAM to the CloudFormation configuration.

What are the options for resolving CAPABILITIES_IAM errors

Answer 1

Turns out you need to check a box on the last screen of the stack creation.

In CodePipeline CloudFormation you can add it like this to allow execution of the created change_set in the deploy action:

Configuration:
        StackName: !Ref GitHubRepository
        ActionMode: CHANGE_SET_REPLACE
        Capabilities: CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM
        RoleArn: arn:aws:iam::818272543125:role/events-list-codepiplinerole
        ChangeSetName: !Join ["",[!Ref GitHubRepository, "-changeset"]]
        TemplatePath: MyAppBuild::sam_post.yaml

In the aws cli append

--capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM

or

--capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM

To your command like this:

aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name message-store --template-body file://bucket_with_keys.yaml --parameters file://cfg_bucket_with_keys.json --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM

This does not apply to cloudformation --validate-template as it is not actually creating the resources.

Answer 2

If you are using the AWS CLI, you can add an extra parameter to the aws cloudformation create-stack command that explicitly states you want these capabilities provided.

(this is the CLI equivalent of ticking the checkbox in the other answer here).

The parameter is --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM, so your command would look like:

aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name $STACK_NAME --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM

Hope that helps