BucketPilot Drop — upload from a desktop or a server

A folder on your computer or server whose contents upload to a bucket by themselves — install it, sign in, and what it does with your files.

What it is

BucketPilot Drop gives a computer or a server a folder that uploads to one of your buckets (or a connected server drive) as you. Put a file in, and a moment later it is in the bucket; once BucketPilot has confirmed it, it leaves the folder.

•It is you, not a key. You sign in with your BucketPilot account by approving a code in a browser, so it can write exactly where you can write and nowhere else. Nobody pastes an access key into a machine.
•One way. Files go in. Drop has no way to delete anything from your bucket.
•Folders both ways. The bucket's folders appear in the drop (refreshed every couple of minutes), and a folder you create in the drop is created in the bucket.
•It needs a plan that can upload. The read-only Free tier cannot connect a computer.

Not sure it fits? Three pages show it at work: upload a Linux folder to S3 automatically (the general case), scan to S3 and media ingest to S3.

It comes in three forms:

	For	Where the drop is
Mac and Windows app	A desk	A drive in Finder / This PC
Linux desktop app	A Linux desk (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, RHEL and relatives)	A folder, `~/BucketPilot_Drop`
Server program (`bucketpilot-drop`)	A Linux server with no screen — a scanner share, a render farm, a camera ingest	A folder you choose, uploaded by a service

For the Mac and Windows installers, ask us and we will send them. The Linux packages are public — below.

Install on Linux

One line, on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, Rocky or Alma, x86-64 or arm64. It checks the signing key's fingerprint, adds BucketPilot's signed package repository, and installs — so updates arrive with your normal system updates.

The desktop app:

bash

curl -fsSL https://packages.bucketpilot.io/install.sh | sudo sh

Open BucketPilot Drop from your applications menu (or run bucketpilot-drop-desktop).

The server program — a single file with nothing else to install, no Node:

bash

curl -fsSL https://packages.bucketpilot.io/install.sh | sudo sh -s -- --server

The package repository has its own page, packages.bucketpilot.io, with the apt and dnf setup lines and the signing key's fingerprint; you can read the install script first at packages.bucketpilot.io/install.sh. Prefer to add the repository by hand? The commands for apt and dnf are on packages.bucketpilot.io, with the key's fingerprint: 7BD2 8641 3318 1DC8 7FF4 5B92 8C49 99F0 BFDD 52BB.

A server runs on glibc 2.17 or newer on x86-64 (Ubuntu 18.04, CentOS 7 and later), and 2.28 or newer on arm64. An older system is refused by the package manager with a message, rather than installed and failing later.

No package manager? Ask us for the AppImage as a .tar.gz with a Run.sh — unpack it and run ./Run.sh; nothing to install and no administrator password.

Set up the server program

Three commands. None of them needs a browser on the server.

bash

bucketpilot-drop login
bucketpilot-drop buckets
bucketpilot-drop connect <bucket>

login prints an address and a code — open the address on any device where you are signed in to BucketPilot and approve the code. buckets lists the buckets you can upload to. connect starts the uploading.

connect takes a bucket's name or id and, optionally, --prefix scans/ (a folder inside the bucket) and --folder /srv/drop (the folder to watch). Without --folder the drop is ~/BucketPilot_Drop. It refuses a bucket or folder you cannot write to, and says why. It also starts the service for you (a systemd service, running as you — or as root if you ran it as root), so a file put in the folder uploads by itself; add --no-service if you would rather run bucketpilot-drop run yourself.

The server shows up under Settings → Connected devices with its status, and can be disconnected from there in one click.

What happens to files

•A file is uploaded once it has stopped growing (a copy still in progress is not sent half-written), then removed from the server's folder after BucketPilot confirmed it. A failed upload never removes anything. Change this with --after-upload keep (leave it, never send it twice) or --after-upload move:/some/other/folder.
•Hidden files and temporary files (.something, ~$lock, .tmp) are not sent.
•The bucket's folders appear in the drop within a couple of minutes, and a folder you create in the drop is created in the bucket. --no-mirror turns this off.

Changing bucket (bucketpilot-drop connect <other bucket>) empties the drop, so you see the new bucket's folders and nothing from the old one. Files are moved aside to ~/.config/bucketpilot-drop/removed/<time>/ — not deleted — and nothing in either bucket is touched. If the drop holds a file the old bucket never received, connect stops and tells you; add --yes to continue.

Settings changes take effect by themselves: a running service notices a new bucket, folder or option within seconds and restarts with it.

Logs and status

bash

bucketpilot-drop status
tail -f /var/log/BucketPilot/drop.log

status shows who is signed in, where files go, whether the service is running, the version and the log path. The log lists every file that uploaded and every failure with its reason.

The log rotates at 10 MB, keeping one older file. If you run the program by hand without access to /var/log/BucketPilot, the log is drop.log next to the settings (~/.config/bucketpilot-drop).

bucketpilot-drop run --once uploads what is in the folder now and exits — handy to test, or from cron.

Updating is the system's own: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade, or sudo dnf upgrade. The package restarts a running service on upgrade.

If something is wrong

You see	It means	What to do
"Something on this network blocked the request — the reply came from cloudflare, not BucketPilot (403)"	A firewall, proxy, VPN or web filter between the machine and BucketPilot refused the request	Try from another network, or ask whoever runs the network to allow `bucketpilot.io`. The message ends with a reference (a Ray ID) — send it to support
"No permission to write there"	Your role cannot upload to that bucket or folder	Ask a workspace admin for write access, or connect to a folder you can write to
The device shows Offline in Connected devices	Nothing has reported for a few minutes	`bucketpilot-drop status` — is the service running? A one-off `run --once` does not mark a server offline
"signed out — the device session was revoked"	The connection was disconnected in Connected devices	Run `bucketpilot-drop login` again
A file stays in the drop	It is still being written, was ignored (hidden or temporary), or failed	Read the log; failed files are retried and the reason is shown

Still stuck? Send support the last lines of the log.

Working with objects

Bucket policies