How to download an entire bucket in GCP?

Question

I have a problem downloading entire folder in GCP. How should I download the whole bucket? I run this code in GCP Shell Environment:

gsutil -m cp -R gs://my-uniquename-bucket ./C:\Users\Myname\Desktop\Bucket

and I get an error message: "CommandException: Destination URL must name a directory, bucket, or bucket subdirectory for the multiple source form of the cp command. CommandException: 7 files/objects could not be transferred."

Could someone please point out the mistake in the code line?

Answer 1

To download an entire bucket You must install google cloud SDK

then run this command

gsutil -m cp -R gs://project-bucket-name path/to/local

where path/to/local is your path of local storage of your machine

Answer 2

The error lies within the destination URL as specified by the error message.

I run this code in GCP Shell Environment

Remember that you are running the command from the Cloud Shell and not in a local terminal or Windows Command Line. Thus, it is throwing that error because it cannot find the path you specified. If you inspect the Cloud Shell's file system/structure, it resembles more that of a Unix environment in which you can specify the destination like such instead: ~/bucketfiles/. Even a simple gsutil -m cp -R gs://bucket-name.appspot.com ./ will work since Cloud Shell can identify the ./ directory which is the current directory.

A workaround to this issue is to perform the command on your Windows Command Line. You would have to install Google Cloud SDK beforehand.

Alternatively, this can also be done in Cloud Shell, albeit with an extra step:

1. Download the bucket objects by running gsutil -m cp -R gs://bucket-name ~/ which will download it into the home directory in Cloud Shell
2. Transfer the files downloaded in the ~/ (home) directory from Cloud Shell to the local machine either through the User Interface or by running gcloud alpha cloud-shell scp