:title: AWS CLI S3 FAQ
:description: Frequented Asked Questions for Amazon S3 in the AWS CLI
:category: S3
:related command: s3 cp, s3 sync, s3 mv, s3 rm


S3 FAQ
======

Below are common questions regarding the use of Amazon S3 in the AWS CLI.


Q: Does the AWS CLI validate checksums?
---------------------------------------

The AWS CLI will perform checksum validation for uploading and downloading
files in specific scenarios.

Upload
~~~~~~

The AWS CLI will calculate and auto-populate the ``Content-MD5`` header for
both standard and multipart uploads.  If the checksum that S3 calculates does
not match the ``Content-MD5`` provided, S3 will not store the object and
instead will return an error message back the AWS CLI.  The AWS CLI will retry
this error up to 5 times before giving up.  On the case that any files fail to
transfer successfully to S3, the AWS CLI will exit with a non zero RC.
See ``aws help return-codes`` for more information.

If the upload request is signed with Signature Version 4, then the AWS CLI uses the
``x-amz-content-sha256`` header as a checksum instead of ``Content-MD5``.
The AWS CLI will use Signature Version 4 for S3 in several cases:

* You're using an AWS region that only supports Signature Version 4.  This
  includes ``eu-central-1`` and ``ap-northeast-2``.
* You explicitly opt in and set ``signature_version = s3v4`` in your
  ``~/.aws/config`` file.

Note that the AWS CLI will add a ``Content-MD5`` header for both
the high level ``aws s3`` commands that perform uploads
(``aws s3 cp``, ``aws s3 sync``) as well as the low level ``s3api``
commands including ``aws s3api put-object`` and ``aws s3api upload-part``.


Download
~~~~~~~~

The AWS CLI will attempt to verify the checksum of downloads when possible,
based on the ``ETag`` header returned from a ``GetObject`` request that's
performed whenever the AWS CLI downloads objects from S3.  If the calculated
MD5 checksum does not match the expected checksum, the file is deleted
and the download is retried.  This process is retried up to 3 times.
If a downloads fails, the AWS CLI will exit with a non zero RC.
See ``aws help return-codes`` for more information.

There are several conditions where the CLI is *not* able to verify
checksums on downloads:

* If the object was uploaded via multipart uploads
* If the object was uploaded using server side encryption with KMS
* If the object was uploaded using a customer provided encryption key
* If the object is downloaded using range ``GetObject`` requests