How to Setup Amazon S3 Correct Way for Your Discourse Forum – Setup Auto Image and Backup Upload Both to AWS S3

Yesterday I setup automatic file upload and backup upload to Amazon AWS S3. During setup I faced number of issues. Current documentation on Discourse Meta site is not up-to-date. It’s with old setup steps and user may easily get confused with new updated AWS console UI changes.

Here is our Crunchify Forum: http://forums.crunchify.com. Between head over to tutorial Setting up Discourse on Linode correct way if you want to start your own forum

During setup, I faced below two issues:

Issue-1

[2016-12-15 04:01:13] EXCEPTION: unable to sign request without credentials set
[2016-12-15 04:01:13] /var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/aws-sdk-core-2.5.3/lib/aws-sdk-core/plugins/request_signer.rb:100:in `require_credentials'
...
...
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/unicorn-5.2.0/lib/unicorn/http_server.rb:508:in `spawn_missing_workers'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/unicorn-5.2.0/lib/unicorn/http_server.rb:132:in `start'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/unicorn-5.2.0/bin/unicorn:126:in `<top (required)>'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/bin/unicorn:23:in `load'
...
...

This got resolved by unchecking box for use iam profile (check diagram below).

Issue-2

[2016-12-15 18:17:43] EXCEPTION: Access Denied
[2016-12-15 18:17:43] /var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/aws-sdk-core-2.5.3/lib/seahorse/client/plugins/raise_response_errors.rb:15:in `call'
...
...
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/unicorn-5.2.0/bin/unicorn:126:in `<top (required)>'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/bin/unicorn:22:in `load'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/bin/unicorn:22:in `<main>'
[2016-12-15 18:17:43] Notifying 'crunchify' of the end of the backup...
...
...

This got resolved by correcting bucket name. Make sure to provide same bucket name for backup folder too (check diagram below).

This tutorial will help you setup Amazon S3 right way for your Discourse Forum including if you have any of below questions.

• Setting up Discourse on AWS
• A better Discourse backup to Amazon S3
• Setting up file and image uploads to AWS S3
• Connect Amazon S3 to Discourse Integration
• Setting up file and image uploads to S3

Let’s get Started:

Step-1

• Go to Amazon AWS S3 using link: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/
• Register for it. Provide credit card and right shipping address to complete setup
• By default, Amazon Free tier comes with 12 months of free access

Step-2

• Go to AWS Management Console using link: https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region=us-west-2
• Search for IAM in search box

Step-3

• From left side panel click on Policies
• Click on Create Policy Button
• Click on Select button next to Create Your Own Policy
• Provide Name crunchify-com-discourse, Description and Document

Policy Document:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "s3:*",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::crunchify-com-s3",
                "arn:aws:s3:::crunchify-com-s3/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

NOTE: Please make sure to change bucket name from crunchify-com-s3 to your own preferred name.

Step-4

• Now from left panel click on Users link
• Click on Add User
• Provide User name
• Click Programmatic access checkbox for Access type

• Next screen click on Attach existing policies directly
• Select crunchify-com-discourse from list of policy
• On Next Screen, click on Create User
• You will be given Access key ID and Secret access key which you need to provide into Discourse Setting page

Step-5

• Now go to Amazon S3: https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/home?region=us-west-2
• Click on Create Bucket button
• Provide bucket name crunchify-com-s3. This should match with Policy document bucket name
• Select region Oregon and click Create

Step-6

• Go to Files section of your forum Admin Setting page: admin/site_settings/category/files
• Provide all detailed values as you see in below screenshot
• Check checkbox for enable s3 uploads
• Don’t check checkbox for s3 use iam profile
• Provide S3 access key id, secret access key, region and upload bucket

Step-7

• Go to Backups tab here: admin/site_settings/category/backups
• Click checkbox for enable s3 backups
• Provide bucket name as you created above

And you should be all set. You are done with your setup. Take a break if you need as we need to test and debug our setup next.

Let’s get started on verification

Step-1 – file upload

Try uploading new image to your post and you should see it should be updated to your AWS S3.

Step-2 – backup .zip file upload

Try running backup manually and you should see file should be uploaded to AWS S3 folder too

The post How to Setup Amazon S3 Correct Way for Your Discourse Forum – Setup Auto Image and Backup Upload Both to AWS S3 appeared first on Crunchify.

Author: App Shah