Uploading files to S3 account from Linux command line

Amazon provides their own CLI tools now too.

From http://aws.amazon.com/cli/

Using familiar syntax, you can view the contents of your S3 buckets in a directory-based listing.

$ aws s3 ls s3://mybucket
      LastWriteTime     Length Name
      -------------     ------ ----
                           PRE myfolder/
2013-09-03 10:00:00       1234 myfile.txt
...

You can perform recursive uploads and downloads of multiple files in a single folder-level command. The AWS CLI will run these transfers in parallel for increased performance.

$ aws s3 cp myfolder s3://mybucket/myfolder --recursive
upload: myfolder/file1.txt to s3://mybucket/myfolder/file1.txt
upload: myfolder/subfolder/file1.txt to s3://mybucket/myfolder/subfolder/file1.txt
...

A sync command makes it easy to synchronize the contents of a local folder with a copy in an S3 bucket.

$ aws s3 sync myfolder s3://mybucket/myfolder --exclude *.tmp
upload: myfolder/newfile.txt to s3://mybucket/myfolder/newfile.txt
...

Documentation for file related commands is here.

S3cmd does what you want. Uploading and downloading files, syncing directories and creating buckets.

S3cmd is a free command line tool and client for uploading, retrieving and managing data in Amazon S3 and other cloud storage service providers that use the S3 protocol, such as Google Cloud Storage or DreamHost DreamObjects. It is best suited for power users who are familiar with command line programs. It is also ideal for batch scripts and automated backup to S3, triggered from cron, etc.

If you can't (perhaps you're on a shared host) or don't want to install extra tools, it is possible to just use bash, curl, and openssl.

http://tmont.com/blargh/2014/1/uploading-to-s3-in-bash

file=/path/to/file/to/upload.tar.gz
bucket=your-bucket
resource="/${bucket}/${file}"
contentType="application/x-compressed-tar"
dateValue=`date -R`
stringToSign="PUT\n\n${contentType}\n${dateValue}\n${resource}"
s3Key=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
s3Secret=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
signature=`echo -en ${stringToSign} | openssl sha1 -hmac ${s3Secret} -binary | base64`
curl -L -X PUT -T "${file}" \
  -H "Host: ${bucket}.s3.amazonaws.com" \
  -H "Date: ${dateValue}" \
  -H "Content-Type: ${contentType}" \
  -H "Authorization: AWS ${s3Key}:${signature}" \
  https://${bucket}.s3.amazonaws.com/${file}

Note that I modified this script from the one in the above link. I added the -L option because AWS may insert a redirect in there. The -L option will follow the redirect for you.

One other caveat. This won't work for files larger than 5GB. Those require a multi-part upload that would require a more complex script.