Manta Buckets API - S3 Layer Quick Start Guide

January 20, 2026 · View on GitHub

This guide will help you get started with using the S3-compatible layer of the Manta Buckets API. You'll learn how to create access keys and configure your S3 clients to work with Manta storage.

Prerequisites

System Requirements

AWS CLI: Version 2.0+ with JSON output support
s3cmd: Version 2.0+ for s3cmd tests
jq: JSON processor for parsing responses
json: Node.js json tool (npm install -g json)
curl: For HTTP requests
Basic Unix tools: grep, sed, awk, dd, md5sum

Install Dependencies

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install awscli s3cmd jq node 
npm install -g json

SmartOS/macOS (pkgsrc)

pkgin in jq py310-awscli-1.36.10 curl nodejs 
npm install -g json

Ubuntu/Debian

# AWS CLI
curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscli.zip"
unzip awscli.zip && sudo ./aws/install

# Other tools
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install s3cmd jq nodejs npm 
sudo npm install -g json

Creating Access Keys

Step 1: Create Access Key and Secret

The S3 layer uses your Manta your access keys and secret access key from your account. To create the access key and secret, we need to use cloudapi.

# Call cloudapi to generate access keys and secret
cloudapi /your-manta-account/accesskeys | json -H
[]
# as expected your account those not have access keys, so let's generate them.
cloudapi /your-manta-account/accesskeys -X POST
{"dn":"accesskeyid=your-access-key-id, uuid=your-manta-account-uuid, ou=users, o=smartdc","controls":[],"accesskeyid":"your-access-key-id","accesskeysecret":"your-access-key-secret","created":"2025-07-28T14:38:51.900Z","objectclass":"accesskey","status":"Active"}

Step 2: Configure Your S3 Client

AWS CLI Configuration

[default]
aws_access_key_id = "your-manta-access-key"
aws_secret_access_key = "your-manta-secret-key"
region = us-east-1
s3=
         addressing_style = path

s3cmd Configuration

Create or edit ~/.s3cfg:

[default]
access_key = your-access-key
secret_key = your-secret-key
host_base = your-manta-endpoint
host_bucket = your-manta-endpoint
use_https = True
signature_v2 = False

Environment Variables

You can also use environment variables:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-access-key
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret-access-key
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
export AWS_ENDPOINT_URL=https://your-manta-endpoint

Testing Your Configuration

Test Basic Operations

# List buckets
aws s3 ls --endpoint-url https://your-manta-endpoint

# Create a bucket
aws s3 mb s3://test-bucket --endpoint-url https://your-manta-endpoint

# Upload a file
aws s3 cp local-file.txt s3://test-bucket/ --endpoint-url https://your-manta-endpoint

# List objects in bucket
aws s3 ls s3://test-bucket/ --endpoint-url https://your-manta-endpoint

# Download a file
aws s3 cp s3://test-bucket/local-file.txt downloaded-file.txt --endpoint-url https://your-manta-endpoint

Test with ACLs

ACLs are not applied to objects within a bucket, not to the bucket itself.

# Upload with public-read ACL
aws s3 cp local-file.txt s3://test-bucket/ --acl public-read --endpoint-url https://your-manta-endpoint

Service Dependencies

The following table shows the services that the Manta Buckets API S3 layer depends on:

Service Name	Service Type	UUID/Identifier	Needs Extra Steps?
`authcache`	Authentication & Authorization	2d6c9916-2bc3-40d7-ad3c-4f76fb5fbc05	Yes - Requires cache rebuild
`buckets-api`	Core Bucket Operations	684049e8-9b78-49b3-8e09-8744f7df3698	No - Direct integration
`storage`	Storage Nodes	5735eba4-746c-4f93-b275-8d739e53f1e4	No - Backend dependency
`loadbalancer`	Traffic Distribution	f9f32770-14fa-4f85-a7cc-a1b8b62ede07	No - direct integration
`ufds0`	Directory Service	1ffa2197-93ca-452a-bfb1-4ce3d68ebf85	No - direct integration
`cloudapi`	HTTP API for smartdatacenter	e41cfd36-a401-44e0-be97-5028cbbee79b	No - direct integration
`mahi`	Authentication & Authorization	62fc7fb1-a572-4ea7-b886-1ebd0a6d5731	No - direct integration

Services Requiring Extra Steps

Required steps after the required services from the service dependencies table are specified in https://github.com/TritonDataCenter/manta-buckets-api/blob/MANTA-5471/docs/deployment.md

Additional information

Presigned URLs
Anonymous Access
[Divergences between Manta and S3] (https://github.com/TritonDataCenter/manta-buckets-api/blob/MANTA-5471/docs/divergences.md)
[S3 Compatibility Documentation] (https://github.com/TritonDataCenter/manta-buckets-api/blog/MANTA-5471/docs/s3.md)
[Testing] (https://github.com/TritonDatacenter/manta-buckets-api/blog/MANTA-5471/docs/testing.md)