Configuration Cloud Storage

Cloud Storage (S3), Setup and Configuration

Photosphere supports S3-compatible storage for both local and cloud deployments. You can use AWS S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, MinIO, or any S3-compatible service.

I recommend Digital Ocean Spaces because it works well, relatively simply to configure and is cost effective. For detailed instructions on setting up Digital Ocean Spaces, see Configuration-Digital-Ocean-Spaces.

Configuring S3 Credentials

There are three ways to provide S3 credentials:

1. Link credentials to a database entry (recommended)

Register your database with psi dbs add and link an S3 credentials secret to it. Credentials are then resolved automatically whenever you reference the database by name:

psi dbs add      # follow the prompts, create or pick an S3 credentials secret
psi summary --db my-photos   # credentials resolved automatically

See Managing-Databases and Managing-Secrets for details.

2. Lazy interactive setup

When you run a command that accesses an S3 path for the first time and no credentials are found, psi will prompt you to configure them. You will be asked for a name (defaulting to "S3 credentials") and the credential fields. The credentials are stored in the vault under the key default:s3 and reused on subsequent runs. They are visible in psi secrets list.

3. Environment variables

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<your-access-key-id>
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<your-secret-key>
export AWS_REGION=us-east-1
export AWS_ENDPOINT=https://syd1.digitaloceanspaces.com  # non-AWS S3 only

When these are set, no vault lookup is performed and the lazy prompt is skipped.

Using S3 Storage

Once configured, you can use S3 paths directly in commands:

# Replicate a local database to S3
psi replicate --db my-photos --dest s3:my-bucket/photos

# Initialize an empty database in S3
psi init --db s3:my-bucket/photos

# Add files to S3-backed database
psi add --db s3:my-bucket/photos ~/Pictures/*.jpg

Clearing Configuration

To remove stored credentials, use psi secrets remove and select the secret to remove.