---
title: "Amazon S3"
description: "Rclone docs for Amazon S3"
date: "2014-04-26"
---

<i class="fa fa-amazon"></i> Amazon S3
---------------------------------------

Paths are specified as `remote:bucket` (or `remote:` for the `lsd`
command.)  You may put subdirectories in too, eg `remote:bucket/path/to/dir`.

Here is an example of making an s3 configuration.  First run

    rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process.

```
No remotes found - make a new one
n) New remote
q) Quit config
n/q> n
name> remote
What type of source is it?
Choose a number from below
 1) swift
 2) s3
 3) local
 4) google cloud storage
 5) dropbox
 6) drive
type> 2
AWS Access Key ID.
access_key_id> accesskey
AWS Secret Access Key (password). 
secret_access_key> secretaccesskey
Region to connect to.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
 * The default endpoint - a good choice if you are unsure.
 * US Region, Northern Virginia or Pacific Northwest.
 * Leave location constraint empty.
 1) us-east-1
 * US West (Oregon) Region
 * Needs location constraint us-west-2.
 2) us-west-2
[snip]
 * South America (Sao Paulo) Region
 * Needs location constraint sa-east-1.
 9) sa-east-1
 * If using an S3 clone that only understands v2 signatures - eg Ceph - set this and make sure you set the endpoint.
10) other-v2-signature
 * If using an S3 clone that understands v4 signatures set this and make sure you set the endpoint.
11) other-v4-signature
region> 1
Endpoint for S3 API.
Leave blank if using AWS to use the default endpoint for the region.
Specify if using an S3 clone such as Ceph.
endpoint> 
Location constraint - must be set to match the Region. Used when creating buckets only.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
 * Empty for US Region, Northern Virginia or Pacific Northwest.
 1) 
 * US West (Oregon) Region.
 2) us-west-2
 * US West (Northern California) Region.
 3) us-west-1
 * EU (Ireland) Region.
 4) eu-west-1
[snip]
location_constraint> 1
Remote config
--------------------
[remote]
access_key_id = accesskey
secret_access_key = secretaccesskey
region = us-east-1
endpoint = 
location_constraint = 
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y
Current remotes:

Name                 Type
====                 ====
remote               s3

e) Edit existing remote
n) New remote
d) Delete remote
q) Quit config
e/n/d/q> q
```

This remote is called `remote` and can now be used like this

See all buckets

    rclone lsd remote:

Make a new bucket

    rclone mkdir remote:bucket

List the contents of a bucket

    rclone ls remote:bucket

Sync `/home/local/directory` to the remote bucket, deleting any excess
files in the bucket.

    rclone sync /home/local/directory remote:bucket

### Modified time ###

The modified time is stored as metadata on the object as
`X-Amz-Meta-Mtime` as floating point since the epoch accurate to 1 ns.

### Multipart uploads ###

rclone supports multipart uploads with S3 which means that it can
upload files bigger than 5GB. Note that files uploaded with multipart
upload don't have an MD5SUM.

### Buckets and Regions ###

With Amazon S3 you can list buckets (`rclone lsd`) using any region,
but you can only access the content of a bucket from the region it was
created in.  If you attempt to access a bucket from the wrong region,
you will get an error, `incorrect region, the bucket is not in 'XXX'
region`.

### Anonymous access to public buckets ###

If you want to use rclone to access a public bucket, configure with a
blank `access_key_id` and `secret_access_key`.  Eg

```
e) Edit existing remote
n) New remote
d) Delete remote
q) Quit config
e/n/d/q> n
name> anons3
What type of source is it?
Choose a number from below
 1) amazon cloud drive
 2) drive
 3) dropbox
 4) google cloud storage
 5) local
 6) s3
 7) swift
type> 6
AWS Access Key ID - leave blank for anonymous access.
access_key_id> 
AWS Secret Access Key (password) - leave blank for anonymous access.
secret_access_key> 
Region to connect to.
region> 1
endpoint> 
location_constraint> 
```

Then use it as normal with the name of the public bucket, eg

    rclone lsd anons3:1000genomes

You will be able to list and copy data but not upload it.

### Ceph ###

Ceph is an object storage system which presents an Amazon S3 interface.

To use rclone with ceph, you need to set the following parameters in
the config.

```
access_key_id = Whatever
secret_access_key = Whatever
endpoint = https://ceph.endpoint.goes.here/
region = other-v2-signature
```

Note also that Ceph sometimes puts `/` in the passwords it gives
users.  If you read the secret access key using the command line tools
you will get a JSON blob with the `/` escaped as `\/`.  Make sure you
only write `/` in the secret access key.

Eg the dump from Ceph looks something like this (irrelevant keys
removed).

```
{
    "user_id": "xxx",
    "display_name": "xxxx",
    "keys": [
        {
            "user": "xxx",
            "access_key": "xxxxxx",
            "secret_key": "xxxxxx\/xxxx"
        }
    ],
}
```

Because this is a json dump, it is encoding the `/` as `\/`, so if you
use the secret key as `xxxxxx/xxxx`  it will work fine.
