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Install S3cmd on Mac

Previously, I wrote about installing and accessing Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) from Ubuntu using s3cmd command line tool. Interestingly enough, the S3cmd command line tool is also available on the Mac, since MacOS is based on NeXT, which was based on BSD, which is a major variant of Unix. Anyways, you can install s3cmd on the Mac so you can access to Amazon S3 via the command line.

How to Install

$ sudo sudo python setup.py install

Configure

$ s3cmd --configure

The configuration will ask you to provide your access key and secret key. You can get those keys from your AWS account or your AWS administrator.

Once it’s configured and you have access to the S3, you can try the following commands.

# list the files
$ s3cmd ls 
# get file sizes in human form
$ s3cmd du -H s3://yourbucket
# create a new bucket
$ s3cmd mb s3://newbucket
# put file into bucket
$ s3cmd put filename.ext s3://bucket/folder
# get file from bucket
$ s3cmd get s3://yourbucket/yourfolder/yourfile
# delete file from bucket
$ s3cmd del s3://yourbucket/yourfolder/yourfile

There are a lot more commands you can explore. Here’s the documentation.

Install S3cmd on Ubuntu

If you want to backup your Linux server to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), you need to install a utility called S3cmd which allows you to interact with Amazon’s cloud storage service. You’ll be able to create s3 buckets, upload and retrieve files from your Linux server to the S3.

You can install S3cmd from Ubuntu.

sudo apt-get install s3cmd

Next, you need to configure S3cmd using your S3 credentials. You’ll need an Access key and a Secret key from Amazon’s Security Credentials page which you can access from Amazon’s IAM Management Console.

sudo s3cmd --configure

For details on how to fully implement S3cmd, please take a look at this article.

Cyberduck

If you’re looking for a S3 client, check out Cyberduck. It’s a free FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 & OpenStack Swift browser for both Mac and Windows. I started using it primarily to access an Amazon S3 account. Just download the client and select Amazon S3 to access your account.

You will need an Access Key ID and your Secret Access Key for your S3 account. You can get that from the AWS Dashboard under IAM (Identity Access Management). Once you’re authenticated, you can access your files from within Cyberduck. Drag and drop to download and upload. Very simple and intuitive.