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
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.