gcloud: The user does not have access to service account "default"

Question

I attempting to use an activated service account scoped to create and delete gcloud container clusters (k8s clusters), using the following commands:

gcloud config configurations create my-svc-account \
   --no-activate \
   --project myProject


gcloud auth activate-service-account [email protected] \
   --key-file=/path/to/keyfile.json \
   --configuration my-svc-account

gcloud container clusters create a-new-cluster \
   --configuration my-svc-account \
   --project= my-project
   --zone "my-zone"

I always receive the error:

...ERROR: (gcloud.container.clusters.create) ResponseError: code=400, message=The user does not have access to service account "default".

How do I grant my-svc-account access to the default service account for GKE?

Solution 1

After talking to Google Support, the issue was that the service account did not have a "Service Account User" permissions activated. Adding "Service Account User" resolves this error.

Solution 2

Add the following role to the service account who makes the operation:

Service Account User

Also see:

• https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/iam#service_account_user

• https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/service-accounts#the_service_account_user_role

• https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-roles

Solution 3

For those that ended up here trying to do an Import of Firebase Firestore documents with a command such as:

gcloud beta firestore import --collection-ids='collectionA','collectionB' gs://YOUR_BUCKET

I got around the issue by doing the following:

1. From the Google Cloud Console Storage Bucket Browser, add the service account completing the operation to the list of members with a role of Storage Admin.
2. Re-attempt the operation.

For security, I revoked the role after the operation completed, but that's optional.

Comments

[mongrelion]

Cheers. This definitely did it. Only thing to note is that the role is now called "Service Account User".

[matt b]

for more info on the above point see cloud.google.com/iam/docs/…

[vanduc1102]

work well for me, my case, I call ssh from Google Cloud Build to Google Engine VM Instance