How to download an entire bucket in GCP?

user_12282177 0
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I have a problem downloading entire folder in GCP. How should I download the whole bucket? I run this code in GCP Shell Environment:

gsutil -m cp -R gs://my-uniquename-bucket ./C:\Users\Myname\Desktop\Bucket

and I get an error message: "CommandException: Destination URL must name a directory, bucket, or bucket subdirectory for the multiple source form of the cp command. CommandException: 7 files/objects could not be transferred."

Could someone please point out the mistake in the code line?

google-cloud-shell google-cloud-platform
4 Answers

To download an entire bucket You must install google cloud SDK

then run this command

gsutil -m cp -R gs://project-bucket-name path/to/local

where path/to/local is your path of local storage of your machine

user_131688990

The error lies within the destination URL as specified by the error message.

I run this code in GCP Shell Environment

Remember that you are running the command from the Cloud Shell and not in a local terminal or Windows Command Line. Thus, it is throwing that error because it cannot find the path you specified. If you inspect the Cloud Shell's file system/structure, it resembles more that of a Unix environment in which you can specify the destination like such instead: ~/bucketfiles/. Even a simple gsutil -m cp -R gs://bucket-name.appspot.com ./ will work since Cloud Shell can identify the ./ directory which is the current directory.

A workaround to this issue is to perform the command on your Windows Command Line. You would have to install Google Cloud SDK beforehand.

Alternatively, this can also be done in Cloud Shell, albeit with an extra step:

  1. Download the bucket objects by running gsutil -m cp -R gs://bucket-name ~/ which will download it into the home directory in Cloud Shell
  2. Transfer the files downloaded in the ~/ (home) directory from Cloud Shell to the local machine either through the User Interface or by running gcloud alpha cloud-shell scp
user_116721660

Your destination path is invalid:

./C:\Users\Myname\Desktop\Bucket

Change to:

/Users/Myname/Desktop/Bucket

C: is a reserved device name. You cannot specify reserved device names in a relative path. ./C: is not valid.

user_80167200

There is not a one-button solution for downloading a full bucket to your local machine through the Cloud Shell.

The best option for an environment like yours (only using the Cloud Shell interface, without gcloud installed on your local system), is to follow a series of steps:

  • Downloading the whole bucket on the Cloud Shell environment
  • Zip the contents of the bucket
  • Upload the zipped file
  • Download the file through the browser
  • Clean up:
    • Delete the local files (local in the context of the Cloud Shell)
    • Delete the zipped bucket file
  • Unzip the bucket locally

This has the advantage of only having to download a single file on your local machine.

This might seem a lot of steps for a non-developer, but it's actually pretty simple:

First, run this on the Cloud Shell:

mkdir /tmp/bucket-contents/
gsutil -m cp -R gs://my-uniquename-bucket /tmp/bucket-contents/
pushd /tmp/bucket-contents/ 
zip -r /tmp/zipped-bucket.zip .
popd
gsutil cp /tmp/zipped-bucket.zip gs://my-uniquename-bucket/zipped-bucket.zip

Then, download the zipped file through this link: https://storage.cloud.google.com/my-uniquename-bucket/zipped-bucket.zip

Finally, clean up:

rm -rf /tmp/bucket-contents
rm /tmp/zipped-bucket.zip
gsutil rm gs://my-uniquename-bucket/zipped-bucket.zip

After these steps, you'll have a zipped-bucket.zip file in your local system that you can unzip with the tool of your choice.

Note that this might not work if you have too much data in your bucket and the Cloud Shell environment can't store all the data, but you could repeat the same steps on folders instead of buckets to have a manageable size.

user_13088830
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