B2 Command Line Tool

The command-line tool that gives easy access to all of the capabilities of B2 Cloud Storage.

This program provides command-line access to the B2 service.

Documentation

The latest documentation is available on Read the Docs.

Installation

For detailed instructions on how to install the command line tool see our quick start guide.

Homebrew

Homebrew is widely used in the Mac community, particularly amongst developers. We recommend using the B2 CLI Homebrew formula as the quickest setup method for Mac users:

brew install b2-tools

Binaries

Stand-alone binaries are available for Linux and Windows; this is the most straightforward way to use the command-line tool and is sufficient in most use cases. The latest versions are available for download from the Releases page.

Python Package Index

You can also install it in your Python environment (virtualenv is recommended) from PyPI with:

pip install b2[full]

The extra dependencies improve debugging experience and, potentially, performance of b2 CLI, but are not strictly required. You can install the b2 without them:

    pip install b2

Docker

For a truly platform independent solution, use the official docker image:

docker run backblazeit/b2:latest  ...

See examples in Usage/Docker image

Installing from source

Not recommended, unless you want to check if a current pre-release code solves a bug affecting you.

pip install git+https://github.com/Backblaze/B2_Command_Line_Tool.git

If you wish to contribute to or otherwise modify source code, please see our contributing guidelines.

Usage

b2 account                Account management subcommands.
b2 bucket                 Bucket management subcommands.
b2 file                   File management subcommands.
b2 install-autocomplete   Install autocomplete for supported shells.
b2 key                    Application keys management subcommands.
b2 license                Print the license information for this tool.
b2 ls                     List files in a given folder.
b2 replication            Replication rule management subcommands.
b2 rm                     Remove a "folder" or a set of files matching a pattern.
b2 sync                   Copy multiple files from source to destination.
b2 version                Print the version number of this tool.

The environment variable B2_ACCOUNT_INFO specifies the SQLite file to use for caching authentication information. The default file to use is: ~/.b2_account_info.

To get more details on a specific command use b2 <command> --help.

When authorizing with application keys, this tool requires that the key have the listBuckets capability so that it can take the bucket names you provide on the command line and translate them into bucket IDs for the B2 Storage service. Each different command may required additional capabilities. You can find the details for each command in the help for that command.

Docker image

Thanks to ApiVer methodology, you should be perfectly fine using b2:latest version even in long-term support scripts, but make sure to explicitly use b2v4 command from the docker image as shown below.

Authorization

User can either authorize on each command (bucket list is just a example here)

B2_APPLICATION_KEY=<key> B2_APPLICATION_KEY_ID=<key-id> docker run --rm -e B2_APPLICATION_KEY -e B2_APPLICATION_KEY_ID backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 bucket list

or authorize once and keep the credentials persisted:

docker run --rm -it -v b2:/root backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 account authorize
docker run --rm -v b2:/root backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 bucket list  # remember to include `-v` - authorization details are there

Downloading and uploading

When uploading a single file, data can be passed to the container via a pipe:

cat source_file.txt | docker run -i --rm -v b2:/root backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 upload-unbound-stream bucket_name - target_file_name

or by mounting local files in the docker container:

docker run --rm -v b2:/root -v /home/user/path/to/data:/data backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 file upload bucket_name /data/source_file.txt target_file_name

ApiVer CLI versions (`b2` vs `b2v3`, `b2v4`, etc.)

Summary:

in terminal, for best UX, use the latest apiver interface provided by b2 command
for long-term support, i.e. in scripts, use b2v4 command

Explanation:

We use the ApiVer methodology so we can continue to evolve the b2 command line tool, while also providing all the bugfixes to the old interface versions.

If you use the b2 command, you're working with the latest stable interface. It provides all the bells and whistles, latest features, and the best performance. While it's a great version to work with directly, but when writing a reliable, long-running script, you want to ensure that your script won't break when we release a new version of the b2 command.

In that case instead of using the b2 command, you should use a version-bound interface e.g.: b2v4. This command will always provide the same ApiVer 3 interface, regardless of the semantic version of the b2 command. Even if the b2 command goes into the ApiVer 4, 6 or even 10 with some major changes, b2v4 will still provide the same interface, same commands, and same parameters, with all the security and bug fixes. Over time, it might get slower as we may need to emulate some older behaviors, but we'll ensure that it won't break.

You may find the next interface under _b2v5, but please note, as suggested by _ prefix, it is not yet stable and is not yet covered by guarantees listed above.

Contrib

Detailed logs

Verbose logs to stdout can be enabled with the --verbose flag.

A hidden flag --debug-logs can be used to enable logging to a b2_cli.log file (with log rotation at midnight) in current working directory. Please pay attention not to launch the tool from the directory that you are syncing, or the logs will get synced to the remote server (unless that is really what you want to achieve).

For advanced users, a hidden option --log-config <filename.ini> can be used to enable logging in a user-defined format and verbosity. Check out the example log configuration.

Release History

Please refer to the changelog.

Developer Info

Please see our contributing guidelines.

Backblaze/B2_Command_Line_Tool