Does s3sync preserve metadata?

[bbrown]

Does s3sync store a file's metadata, such as owner, group, permissions, ctime, mtime, and so forth?

[ferrix]

On unix-like systems where the ruby permissions and ownership methods work, those data are preserved.  I don't preserve timestamps.

[bbrown]

Can I use s3cmd to retrieve a file from S3 and restore permissions and ownership? It would be similar to the -p option for rsync, cp, and tar.

[ferrix]

s3cmd doesn't (yet?) have the ability to do operations on that high a level.  It is really a very thin wrapper around s3 operations, much like the other "s3 shell" apps out there.

[professionalnerd]

Since my question is related to metadata I thought I'd bump this thread rather than start a new one. 

Where / how is the metadata stored?

There has been mention of using S3Pilot to browse the data - is everything stored in such a way that any other S3 tool should be able to browse the files?

Thanks,

Jon

[ferrix]

There is no standard across tools, not by a long shot. 

The meta data is simply S3 metadata.  I use the keys "owner", "group", and "permissions", and as contents store the numeric values for them as returned by stat.

It is becoming my medium-term vision to create a GUI interface of my own.  I like the idea of 's3fox' but it's a closed source tool and I think that's really hamstringing its development.  Missing some really important features...  But the benefit is that XUL and javascript are really easy to use, and everyone loves firefox!

[professionalnerd]

Ahhh, interesting.  No standards being set out is a bit of a disappointment - seems like just asking for problems!  I imagine it's paths and defining directories, etc where the confusion comes in?

Yes, s3fox is what I've been using so far as it seems like a nice light weight tool and I like anything that I can use on my Mac at home and on my work PC (extensions avoid installation problems with locked down desktops too!), real shame it's closed source.  Like you say, it could do with the benefit of some extra help.  One of the most annoying things is that listing long buckets can lock my browser up for quite a while sometimes.

I love the command line, but sometimes you don't feel like doing anything more than point and click eh!