B2 Command Line Tool

To use the B2 CLI, you must first authorize your account using your application key ID and application key. You can obtain these credentials from the Backblaze B2 website.

Security Note: Providing credentials directly as command-line arguments may expose them to other local users via the process list. It is recommended to use environment variables instead.

Method 1: Command-line arguments

Run b2 account authorize followed by your key ID and application key.

Method 2: Environment variables (Recommended)

Set the B2_APPLICATION_KEY_ID and B2_APPLICATION_KEY environment variables. The CLI will automatically pick these up, allowing you to run the authorize command without arguments.

# Method 1: Direct authorization
$ b2 account authorize 4ab123456789 001aabbccddeeff123456789012345678901234567

# Method 2: Using environment variables (Safer)
$ export B2_APPLICATION_KEY_ID="your_key_id"
$ export B2_APPLICATION_KEY="your_application_key"
$ b2 account authorize

If you cannot use the automatic setup, you must manually configure the source key, the source bucket replication rules, the destination key, and the destination bucket mapping. Follow these steps in order:

1. Create the Source Key

Create a key for the source bucket with the following permissions: readFiles, readFileLegalHolds, and readFileRetentions.

2. Configure Source Replication Rules

Update the source bucket using b2 bucket update --replication with a JSON object defining asReplicationSource. This includes replicationRules (specifying destinationBucketId, fileNamePrefix, includeExistingFiles, isEnabled, priority, and replicationRuleName) and the sourceApplicationKeyId.

3. Create the Destination Key

Create a key for the destination bucket using a specific profile (e.g., --profile myprofile2) with the following permissions: writeFiles, writeFileLegalHolds, writeFileRetentions, and deleteFiles.

4. Configure Destination Replication Mapping

Update the destination bucket using b2 bucket update --replication with a JSON object defining asReplicationDestination. This must include a sourceToDestinationKeyMapping that maps the sourceApplicationKeyId to the new destination key ID.

# 1. Create source key
$ b2 key create my-bucket-rplsrc readFiles,readFileLegalHolds,readFileRetentions

# 2. Setup source replication
$ b2 bucket update --replication '{ "asReplicationSource": { "replicationRules": [ { "destinationBucketId": "85644d98debc657d880b0e1e", "fileNamePrefix": "files-to-share/", "includeExistingFiles": false, "isEnabled": true, "priority": 128, "replicationRuleName": "my-replication-rule-name" } ], "sourceApplicationKeyId": "0014ab1234567890000000123" } }' my-bucket

# 3. Create destination key
$ b2 key create --profile myprofile2 my-bucket-rpldst writeFiles,writeFileLegalHolds,writeFileRetentions,deleteFiles

# 4. Setup destination replication
$ b2 bucket update --profile myprofile2 --replication '{ "asReplicationDestination": { "sourceToDestinationKeyMapping": { "0014ab1234567890000000123": "0024ab2345678900000000234" } } }' my-bucket

When using the official Docker image backblazeit/b2:latest, it is recommended to use version-bound commands like b2v4 for long-term stability in scripts.

Authorization

You can authorize by passing credentials as environment variables for each command, or by persisting credentials in a volume.

File Operations

• Streaming uploads: Use a pipe to pass data to the container.
• Mounted uploads: Mount local directories to the container to use the file upload command.

# Authorize once and persist credentials in a volume named 'b2'
docker run --rm -it -v b2:/root backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 account authorize

# Use persisted credentials to list buckets
docker run --rm -v b2:/root backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 bucket list

# Upload via pipe (streaming)
cat source_file.txt | docker run -i --rm -v b2:/root backblazeit/b2:latest b2v4 upload-unbound-stream bucket_name - target_file_name

# Upload via mounted local directory
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

When performing manual replication setup via b2 bucket update --replication, use the following JSON structures:

Source Configuration (asReplicationSource) Used on the source bucket. Requires sourceApplicationKeyId and an array of replicationRules.

Destination Configuration (asReplicationDestination) Used on the destination bucket. Requires sourceToDestinationKeyMapping, which is a dictionary mapping the source key ID to the destination key ID.

// Source Configuration
{
    "asReplicationSource": {
        "replicationRules": [
            {
                "destinationBucketId": "string",
                "fileNamePrefix": "string",
                "includeExistingFiles": boolean,
                "isEnabled": boolean,
                "priority": integer,
                "replicationRuleName": "string"
            }
        ],
        "sourceApplicationKeyId": "string"
    }
}

// Destination Configuration
{
    "asReplicationDestination": {
        "sourceToDestinationKeyMapping": {
            "SOURCE_KEY_ID": "DESTINATION_KEY_ID"
        }
    }
}