Fixing AWS MFA Entity Already Exists error

Srinath — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 02:50:12 +0000

I'll explain in this post how to fix AWS MFA Entity Already Exists error.

For the sake of this post I'm assuming you have the requisite IAM permissions to carry out the below commands.

What we are trying to do is list the all virtual mfa devices and then delete the defective/conflictive mfa devices. Deleting the defective/conflictive mfa devices, let's the user re-enroll into MFA.

This command will list the virtual mfa devices in your account:

aws iam list-virtual-mfa-devices

Result:

"VirtualMFADevices": [
        {
            "SerialNumber": "arn:aws:iam::1234567890:mfa/AB-CD"
        },
        {
            "SerialNumber": "arn:aws:iam::0987654321:mfa/acbd"
        },
        {
            "SerialNumber": "arn:aws:iam::112233445566:mfa/something",
            "User": {
                "Path": "/",
                "UserId": "ABCDEFGHIJKL",
                "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::112233445566:user/something",
                "CreateDate": "2020-08-14T04:27:38+00:00",
                "PasswordLastUsed": "2020-09-29T07:35:46+00:00"
            },
            "EnableDate": "2020-08-14T04:27:38+00:01"
        }
  ]

Defective MFA virtual device will look something like this:

{
"SerialNumber": "arn:aws:iam::0987654321:mfa/acbd"
}

We just need to delete the defective MFA virtual device:

aws iam delete-virtual-mfa-device --serial-number arn:aws:iam::0987654321:mfa/acbd

Once this is done, ask the user having issues with MFA to enroll again.

How to install Elasticsearch 5.6 and other such older versions

Srinath — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 15:43:52 +0000

Elasticsearch 5.6 is now EOL.

Which begs the question why I'm writing this blogpost. Not all software runs on the bleeding edge of it's dependencies. People have to run and maintain legacy products. It's better not to use dependencies which are EOL because you're missing out on security and performance updates.

I had to install Elasticsearch 5.6 and it took me a while to install it since the oldest version of Elasticsearch which Homebrew(I use a mac) carries is 6. This blogpost is for the next person who runs into a similar issue.

So yes we're going to manually install Elasticsearch and it's dependencies.

Steps to install Elasticsearch

Install Java
Get Elasticsearch
Configure path in your shell
Run Elasticsearch

Install Java

Java8 works just fine with Elasticsearch 5.6.
So we'll go ahead and install that
- brew install openjdk@8
- This blogpost covers Java installation pretty in-depth, feel free to refer it.

Get Elasticsearch

Download Elasticsearch from the official site.
Extract elasticsearch from the zip and keep it in a folder and track the folder.

Configure the environment variables as shown:

export ES_HOME=~/bin/elasticsearch-5.6.16
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/opt/openjdk@8/libexec/openjdk.jdk/Contents/Home
export PATH=$ES_HOME/bin:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Once the environment variables are configured refresh the shell.

Run Elasticsearch

elasticsearch

Blogposts referred:

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

DEV Community: Srinath

Fixing AWS MFA Entity Already Exists error

How to install Elasticsearch 5.6 and other such older versions