I upgraded my FreeBSD VM from 11 to 12 last weekend. Installing Google Cloud SDK was no problem; just use the FreeBSD package:

pkg install google-cloud-sdk

But for AWS CLI tools, there’s only a package for AWS CLI Tools version 1 . CLI Tools version 2 has been out for 3 years now, so we really don’t want to still be using v1.

Usually there’s a simple work-around: since AWS CLI tools is mostly Python scripts, you can install it via PIP. First, verify the version of Python installed, then install PIP3 for that version:

python -V
Python 3.9.16

pkg install py39-pip

Then install AWS CLI Tools v2 via PIP:

pip install awscliv2

But when we go to complete the install, we get this error:

awscliv2 --install
09:27:26 - awscliv2 - ERROR - FreeBSD amd64 is not supported, use docker version

This is because AWS CLI v2 does rely on a binary, and is only compiled for Linux. We can work around this by enabling Linux emulation.

---

Activating Linux Emulation in FreeBSD

First, add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf

linux_enable="YES"

Then either run this command, or simply reboot:

service linux start

Also install the CentOS 7 base from packages:

pkg install linux_base-c7

Completing install of AWS CLI Tools v2

Add the following line near the bottom of /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/awscliv2/installers.py to allow it to support FreeBSD:

    if os_platform == "FreeBSD" and arch == "amd64":
        return install_linux_x86_64()

Now we can complete the install successfully:

arnie@freebsd:~ % awscliv2 --install
10:07:13 - awscliv2 - INFO - Installing AWS CLI v2 for Linux
10:07:13 - awscliv2 - INFO - Downloading package from https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip to /tmp/tmpan_dsh2c.zip
10:07:17 - awscliv2 - INFO - Extracting /tmp/tmpan_dsh2c.zip to to /tmp/tmpnwvl45tn
10:07:26 - awscliv2 - INFO - Installing /tmp/tmpnwvl45tn/aws/install to /home/arnie/.awscliv2
10:08:37 - awscliv2 - INFO - Now awsv2 will use this installed version
10:08:37 - awscliv2 - INFO - Running now to check installation: awsv2 --version

Verify the binary and libraries are installed correctly:

~/.awscliv2/v2/current/dist/aws --version
aws-cli/2.11.10 Python/3.11.2 Linux/3.2.0 exe/x86_64.centos.7 prompt/off

You’ll probably want to include this directory in your path. Since I use TCSH, I do this by adding this line to ~/.cshrc:

set path = (/sbin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/bin $HOME/bin $HOME/.awscliv2/v2/2.11.10/dist)

You’re now ready to configure aws cli tools v2. Run this command:

aws configure

Or, just manually setup the files ~/.aws/config and ~/.aws/credentials. Then try out a command.

aws s3 ls

Use the AWS_PROFILE and AWS_REGION environment variable to override the defaults configured in ~/.aws/config