# Digital Ocean Spaces (S3) "unable to sign request without credentials set" **URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-spaces-s3-unable-to-sign-request-without-credentials-set/391139 **Category:** Support **Tags:** uploads, backups, s3 **Created:** [12 בדצמבר,‏ 2025,‏ 11:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-spaces-s3-unable-to-sign-request-without-credentials-set/391139 "2025-12-12T11:02:15Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 20
### Author: ![DavidO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f475e1/32.png) [@DavidO](https://meta.discourse.org/u/DavidO) #### Post date: [7 בינואר,‏ 2026,‏ 8:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-spaces-s3-unable-to-sign-request-without-credentials-set/391139/20 "2026-01-07T20:14:19Z")
This is what finally worked: These settings had to be in the app.yml config in order for it to finally run the rakes correctly. When they were just in the /admin/site\_settings/ area, it wouldn’t run the rakes correctly. I was getting an errror: **ERROR: Ensure S3 is configured in config/discourse.conf or environment vars** The settings are from here… [Configure an S3 compatible object storage provider for uploads](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-an-s3-compatible-object-storage-provider-for-uploads/148916#digital-ocean-spaces-3) Specifically, I used non-custom Spaces settings with two spaces before each line. … ` DISCOURSE_USE_S3: true` ` DISCOURSE_S3_REGION: whatever` ` DISCOURSE_S3_ENDPOINT: https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com` ` DISCOURSE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID: myaccesskey` ` DISCOURSE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: mysecretkey` ` DISCOURSE_S3_CDN_URL: https://nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com` ` DISCOURSE_S3_BUCKET: my-files` ` DISCOURSE_S3_BACKUP_BUCKET: my-files/my-backups` ` DISCOURSE_BACKUP_LOCATION: s3` ` DISCOURSE_S3_INSTALL_CORS_RULE: false` NOTE: DISCOURSE\_S3\_REGION should literally say “whatever” and not something that could be construed as an actual S3 region (ie. us-west-1). ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/1/d/d1d71a2497dc9ef9e160c260cf3062832af6dcb6.png) Also these settings, in the `hooks` section of the `## Plugins go here area`… `after_assets_precompile:` ` - exec:` ` cd: $home` ` cmd:` ` - sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake s3:upload_assets` ` - sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake s3:expire_missing_assets` This is where I ran into an issue last time. Once that’s in place and I rebuilt, I was getting this loading screen when I tried to bring up our forum in a browser. ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/b/b/5/bb5a8011101ffc407071494085a0fc94541eefa7.png) This is only because it’s looking for assets that haven’t yet been updated. This is where it’s time to run the rakes, from inside the app… `./launcher enter app` `rake s3:upload_assets` Once that ran, the items number jumped up and an “assets” folder showed up in our bucket… ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/a/a/1/aa10064e5181bdede38e7b7049babf6829e9016c.png) Then the forum started loading correctly. These are the only S3 related settings that I have showing in my /admin/site-settings area… ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/4/f/b/4fbbdf81bf74ba2794223c843cb692e589586b6f.png) I ran this to upload all of the files and it updated the URLs from the old path to the new (non-CDN). `rake uploads:migrate_to_s3 --trace` ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/f/3/5/f358b63072fe89a35bf75cbf22f369f236ebd0ed.png) The items number more than tripled after that finished. The only thing I noticed was that old post image paths were using the S3 ENDPOINT URL versus newly posted images were using the S3 CDN URL. https:/my-storage.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/ vs https:/my-storage.sfo3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/ I didn’t really care because at least it was all using S3. But I tried running… `rake posts:rebake` ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/b/6/c/b6c8dbada37dfa2df33b0e337a63777cf6dd4fe6.png) It killed it because it ran out of memory. I tried running this instead… `rake posts:rebake_uncooked_posts` It ran out of memory a few times and restarted itself, then ran out of memory again. Ran it again. Eventually it got through cooking them all. ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/5/9/f/59fcb2b1c97600649a048d702c02be8882e44f12.png) Once it ran all the way through to 100%, all of the links were finally using the S3 CDN URL path, old and new posts. Over 34062 items at 65.9 GB of storage (a backup is \<9 GB). Really happy that it’s all working off of S3 now, including backups. Speaking of, probably a good time to run one! Hope this helps someone. Good luck! --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-spaces-s3-unable-to-sign-request-without-credentials-set/391139)._