bash - Can't run AWS CLI from CRON (credentials)

Trying to run a simple AWS CLI backup script. It loops through lines in an include file, backs those paths up to S3, and dumps output to a log file. When I run this command directly, it runs without any error. When I run it through CRON I get an "Unable to locate credentials" error in my output log.

The shell script:

AWS_CONFIG_FILE="~/.aws/config"

while read p; do
 /usr/local/bin/aws s3 cp $p s3://PATH/TO/BUCKET --recursive >> /PATH/TO/LOG 2>&1
done 

I only added the line to the config file after I started seeing the error, thinking this might fix it (even though I'm pretty sure that's where AWS looks by default).

Shell script is running as root. I can see the AWS config file at the specified location. And it all looks good to me (like I said, it runs fine outside of CRON).

Answer

If it works when you run it directly but not from cron there is probably something different in the environment. You can save your environment interactively by doing

set | sort > env.interactive

And do the same thing in your script

set | sort > /tmp/env.cron

And then diff /tmp/env.cron env.interactive and see what matters. Things like PATH are the most likely culprits.