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Install and Config Mountpoint for Amazon S3 to access to your S3 bucket via SFTP

David Lam

David Lam

— 3 min read
Install and Config Mountpoint for Amazon S3 to access to your S3 bucket via SFTP

Using AWS Transfer Family for SFTP can cost over $200/month. Instead, you can set up a more cost-effective SFTP solution by hosting an SFTP server on an EC2 instance and mounting an S3 bucket using Mountpoint for S3. Below are the steps to achieve this:

A. Mounting an S3 Bucket to an EC2 Instance

Step 1: Create an EC2 Instance

  • Launch an EC2 instance using a supported Amazon Linux or Ubuntu AMI.

Step 2: Create an IAM Role for S3 Access

  • Navigate to IAM > Roles > Create Role.
  • Trusted Entity Type: AWS Service
  • Use Case: EC2
  • Attach a suitable policy:
    • Select AmazonS3FullAccess (grants full access to S3) or
    • Create a custom policy for bucket-specific access.

Step 3: Attach the IAM Role to the EC2 Instance

  • In the EC2 console, select the instance.
  • Click Actions > Security > Modify IAM Role and assign the role you created.

Step 4: Install Mountpoint for S3

For Amazon Linux: 

sudo yum update -y && sudo yum upgrade -y  //skip this line if you don't want to update
wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/mountpoint-s3-release/latest/x86_64/mount-s3.rpm
sudo yum install -y ./mount-s3.rpm

For Ubuntu:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y //skip this line if you don't want to update
wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/mountpoint-s3-release/latest/x86_64/mount-s3.deb
sudo apt-get install -y ./mount-s3.deb

Note: for Graviton instances, replace x86_64 with arm64 in the URL

Verify Installation:

mount-s3 --version

Step 5: Mount the S3 Bucket

Create a directory for the mount point

mkdir ~/mnt/s3bucket

Mount the S3 bucket:

mount-s3 <bucketname> ~/mnt/s3bucket

To mount a specific prefix (subdirectory) within the bucket:

mount-s3 <bucketname> --prefix <bucket-subdirectory>/ ~/mnt/s3bucket

To enable delete permissions:

mount-s3 <bucketname> --add-delete --prefix <bucket-subdirectory>/ ~/mnt/s3bucket

Example:

mount-s3 mybucket --add-delete --prefix companyA/ ~/mnt/s3bucket/companyA

Verify mounting

ls ~/mnt/s3bucket

Unmount the bucket:

umount ~/mnt/s3bucket

B. setup SFTP Server

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