AWS CLI throws “Unable to locate credentials”, the second time it’s run

I was struggling with this, too, but I found an answer over here https://stackoverflow.com/a/17162973/1750869 that helped resolve this issue for me. Reposting answer below.

You don't have to open permissions to everyone. Use the below Bucket policies on source and destination for copying from a bucket in one account to another using an IAM user

Bucket to Copy from – SourceBucket

Bucket to Copy to – DestinationBucket

Source AWS Account ID - XXXX–XXXX-XXXX

Source IAM User - src–iam-user

The below policy means – the IAM user - XXXX–XXXX-XXXX:src–iam-user has s3:ListBucket and s3:GetObject privileges on SourceBucket/* and s3:ListBucket and s3:PutObject privileges on DestinationBucket/*

On the SourceBucket the policy should be like:

{
"Id": "Policy1357935677554",
"Statement": [
    {
        "Sid": "Stmt1357935647218",
        "Action": [
            "s3:ListBucket"
        ],
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::SourceBucket",
        "Principal": {"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::XXXXXXXXXXXX:user/src–iam-user"}
    },
    {
        "Sid": "Stmt1357935676138",
        "Action": ["s3:GetObject"],
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3::: SourceBucket/*",
        "Principal": {"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::XXXXXXXXXXXX:user/src–iam-user"}
   }
]
}

On the DestinationBucket the policy should be:

{
"Id": "Policy1357935677554",
"Statement": [
    {
        "Sid": "Stmt1357935647218",
        "Action": [
            "s3:ListBucket"
        ],
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3::: DestinationBucket",
        "Principal": {"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::XXXXXXXXXXXX:user/src–iam-user"}
    },
    {
        "Sid": "Stmt1357935676138",
        "Action": ["s3:PutObject"],
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3::: DestinationBucket/*",
        "Principal": {"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::XXXXXXXXXXXX:user/src–iam-user"}
   }
]
}

command to be run is s3cmd cp s3://SourceBucket/File1 s3://DestinationBucket/File1

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.