S3 region vs. Discourse region

[dandv (Dan Dascalescu)]

My forum’s backups don’t work due to a mismatch between the region of the S3 bucket specified on Amazon’s site, and the region specified in the Discourse Files setting.

Another user had the same problem:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/backups-not-uploading-to-s3/19707/8?u=dandv

What exactly does the Discourse region setting do, since the S3 bucket already has a region assigned to it when you create it?

Also,

@zogstrip

Note how you did not have to create your S3 bucket? That’s because Discourse will automagically create it for you if it doesn’t already exists.

Maybe the Discourse region setting is used when creating S3 buckets automagically?

Would it be possible to automagically create the backup bucket as well, and avoid having to mess with region settings?

[zogstrip (Régis Hanol)]

@dandv

What exactly does the Discourse region setting do, since the S3 bucket already has a region assigned to it when you create it?

We need to know the region the bucket was created in otherwise we won’t be able to “talk to it”.

@dandv

Maybe the Discourse region setting is used when creating S3 buckets automatigically?

The Discourse region setting is used to know which region of S3 to use. Be it to talk to an existing bucket or to create a new one.

@dandv

Would it be possible to automagically create the backup bucket as well, and avoid having to mess with region settings?

S3 requires a region (if you don’t specify one, it will default to US East)

[dandv (Dan Dascalescu)]

@zogstrip

The Discourse region setting is used to know which region of S3 to use. Be it to talk to an existing bucket or to create a new one.

Does the Discourse region need to be set to the same region as that of the S3 buckets?

What is the mapping between S3 regions, and Discourse regions? Could Discourse simply use the same set of names that S3 uses, i.e.

US Standard
Oregon
Northern California
Ireland
Singapore
Tokyo
Sydney
Sao Paulo
Frankfurt
Seoul

Discourse has ap-northeast-1, ap-southeast-1, ap-southeast-2, us-gov-west-1 right now, which to me at least, is unnecessarily confusing. I actually can’t fathom what us-gov-west-1 might correspond to, or whether Ireland and Frankfurt are both eu-west-1 or something else. Am I missing something here? Is there a good reason for using those names instead of the S3 city/region names?

Here’s another user wondering why these are named differently.

[zogstrip (Régis Hanol)]

@dandv

Does the Discourse region need to be set to the same region as that of the S3 buckets?

Yes.

@dandv

Could Discourse simply use the same set of names that S3 uses, i.e.

The names used in Discourse are the “technical” names. They used to show these instead of City/Country. I will make sure they’re properly translated so they better match those displayed by AWS

[zogstrip (Régis Hanol)]

There you go @dandv. S3 region names are now localized

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/11ea16a91ad0179b55d4ded2081e0beda699c93e