# S3 and Cloudfront - Setup Not Working
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** s3
**Created:** [November 3, 2023, 1:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332 "2023-11-03T13:48:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 1:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/1 "2023-11-03T13:48:33Z")
Hello all!
I followed [this guide](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-file-and-image-uploads-to-s3/7229) to setup s3.
The only option I couldn’t find is " make sure the “ **Programmatic access** ” checkbox is checked"
I couldn’t find any option like that.
But S3 is not working.
Notes: CDN is via CloudFront (s3 is the source of CloudFront)
Thanks
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/2 "2023-11-03T14:19:03Z")
The rake task you’re running insists the specified values are in environment variables, it will not use the ones in the site settings.
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/3 "2023-11-03T14:21:51Z")
Thanks for the response.
I used rake, thinking that image urls would be replaced with CDN link.
But the S3 setting itself is not working.
Did I miss anything in the S3 configuration?
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/4 "2023-11-03T14:23:15Z")
Yes, you need to set the environment variables to run the rake task to migrate to S3.
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/5 "2023-11-03T14:29:20Z")
I’m not getting. Hope you reviewed my discourse settings.
Any extra steps needed apart from this guide? [Set up file and image uploads to S3](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-file-and-image-uploads-to-s3/7229)
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### Author:  [@Arkshine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Arkshine)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/6 "2023-11-03T14:30:17Z")
> [@Set up file and image uploads to S3](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-file-and-image-uploads-to-s3/7229/1):
>
> ## Discourse configuration
>
> Now that you’ve properly set up S3, the final step is to configure your Discourse forum. These instructions should work, but **the preferred method is to use environment variables and a CDN** as described in [Configure an S3 compatible object storage provider for uploads](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-an-s3-compatible-object-storage-provider-for-uploads/148916).
~~I believe you can get an overview of what environment variables you need 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)~~
EDIT: In the context of a rake command, see the answer below 👇
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/7 "2023-11-03T14:34:18Z")
> [@Arkshine](#):
>
> an overview of what environment variables you need here
or from the error:
They must be set in the environment, not in site settings.
You can provide them at the time the rake task is run by doing e.g.:
```plaintext
DISCOURSE_S3_BUCKET=foo DISCOURSE_S3_REGION=us-east-1 DISCOURSE_S3_USE_IAM_PROFILE=true rake uploads:migrate_to_s3
```
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/8 "2023-11-03T14:35:51Z")
oh okay!
So, I’ll add this to app.yml
Example:
```plaintext
DISCOURSE_USE_S3: true
DISCOURSE_S3_REGION: us-west-1
DISCOURSE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID: myaccesskey
DISCOURSE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: mysecretkey
DISCOURSE_S3_CDN_URL: https://falcoland-files-cdn.falco.dev
DISCOURSE_S3_BUCKET: falcoland-files
DISCOURSE_S3_BACKUP_BUCKET: falcoland-files/backups
DISCOURSE_BACKUP_LOCATION: s3
```
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### Author:  [@Arkshine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Arkshine)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/9 "2023-11-03T14:37:39Z")
Please read Michael’s answer instead!
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 2:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/10 "2023-11-03T14:42:06Z")
Since my installation is fresh!
My only concern is new images. Rake, I did because the article suggested.
I thought just adding S3 settings via discource admin was enough to serve new images from S3!
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 3:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/11 "2023-11-03T15:05:13Z")
See [Configure an S3 compatible object storage provider for uploads](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-an-s3-compatible-object-storage-provider-for-uploads/148916)
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 3:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/12 "2023-11-03T15:16:06Z")
Yeah, since my setup is S3 and Cloudfront, I added the S3 code as following.
Now rebuilding. I hope S3 will work!
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 3:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/13 "2023-11-03T15:31:59Z")
Didn’t work! I think something is missing related to S3 permissions!
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 4:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/14 "2023-11-03T16:36:52Z")
Any suggestions?
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2023, 5:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/15 "2023-11-03T17:16:19Z")
There’s 3 parts here:
- can Discourse read/write/etc. on the bucket?
- can anonymous users read from the bucket?
- can the CDN read from the bucket?
Looks like it’s the second part not working?
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2023, 9:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/17 "2023-11-04T09:34:02Z")
Please review my setup and kindly let me know if I missed anything: S3 and CloudFront CDN
Based on [this Guide](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-file-and-image-uploads-to-s3/7229)
**Created two buckets:**
One for CDN (Enabled ACL also)
One for Backups
Created policy by adding two buckets, attached with IAM user, and generated the access keys.
**Created two CloudFront distributions:**
1. [cdn.mysite.com](http://cdn.mysite.com) (origin is the cdn bucket) by configuring CNAME.
2. [assets.mysite.com](http://assets.mysite.com) (origin is [mysite.com](http://mysite.com)) (Community is on the main domain, not sub-domain) by configuring CNAME.
Based on [this guide](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-an-s3-compatible-object-storage-provider-for-uploads/148916):
Added the AWS S3 code, and configuration to app.yml as follows:
Thank You.
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2023, 6:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/19 "2023-11-04T18:00:59Z")
Thanks a lot to @pfaffman
Who gave me a clue about using **www** in the **host address**. My forum was using a non-www version!
I changed to www version, and rebuilt it!
Everything now works fine including cdn and assets!
Thank You.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2023, 12:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/20 "2023-11-05T00:03:51Z")
I can’t quite see how that fixed it, but glad you got it sorted!
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### Author:  [@akhil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/akhil)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2023, 4:53am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/21 "2023-11-05T04:53:16Z")
As I explained [here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/17), after I did this, the site was offline. So, I was unable to see the outcome of that. But when I tried the same setup on a test sub-domain, all was working fine. Therefore, I suspect there is something wrong with the SSL.
Based on your clue of www, I changed the host address, and the issue was fixed immediately.
I also suspect that the site may have gone offline because of [Cloudflare’s recent service outage](https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/hm7491k53ppg).
Anyway, it got fixed.
Thank you!
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2023, 4:53am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/s3-and-cloudfront-setup-not-working/284332/22 "2023-12-05T04:53:35Z")
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