Authenticate Docker to a private AWS ECR registry and push a local image
domain: aws.amazon.com · 10 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Get account ID if unknown: aws sts get-caller-identity --query Account --output text
Authenticate Docker to the registry (token is base64, decoded via get-login-password): aws ecr get-login-password --region <region> | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin <aws_account_id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com
The repository must exist before pushing (unless a repository creation template is configured) — create it first: aws ecr create-repository --repository-name my-repository --region <region>
Optionally set immutable tags at creation time so re-pushing an existing tag fails instead of overwriting: aws ecr create-repository --repository-name my-repository --image-tag-mutability IMMUTABLE --region <region>
Identify the local image to push: docker images
Tag the local image with the full ECR registry URI (format: aws_account_id.dkr.ecr.region.amazonaws.com/repository:tag): docker tag <IMAGE_ID> <aws_account_id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/my-repository:tag
Push the tagged image: docker push <aws_account_id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/my-repository:tag
Re-run the get-login-password | docker login step whenever the token expires — authorization tokens are valid for 12 hours regardless of IAM principal
Grant the pushing principal an IAM policy including ecr:GetAuthorizationToken (Resource "*") plus ecr:InitiateLayerUpload, ecr:UploadLayerPart, ecr:CompleteLayerUpload, ecr:BatchCheckLayerAvailability, ecr:PutImage, ecr:BatchGetImage scoped to the repository ARN (arn:aws:ecr:<region>:<account_id>:repository/<repository-name>)
ECR authorization tokens are valid for exactly 12 hours; after expiry, docker login/push fails and you must re-run 'aws ecr get-login-password | docker login' to get a fresh token — there is no way to extend a token's lifetime.
The repository must already exist in the target registry before 'docker push' will succeed, unless a repository creation template is defined for that prefix; ECR does not auto-create arbitrary repositories.
docker login to ECR requires the literal username 'AWS' (not your IAM user/role name) with the decoded token piped via --password-stdin; using the wrong username or forgetting --password-stdin causes authentication failures.
If the pushing IAM principal lacks ecr:GetAuthorizationToken (which must be granted with Resource "*", not scoped to a repository ARN), authentication fails even if repository-level permissions are otherwise correct.
The registry URI must match the --region used to fetch the token and create the repository; a region mismatch between the login target and the repository's actual region causes authentication or 'repository does not exist' errors.
If authenticating to multiple ECR registries (e.g. different accounts), the get-login-password/docker login command must be repeated once per registry URI — one token/login does not cover multiple registries.
When a repository has IMMUTABLE tag mutability set, pushing an image using a tag that already exists returns an ImageTagAlreadyExistsException instead of overwriting the tag; you must push a new tag or configure tag exclusion filters.
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