shiny-server can't download file from from S3 to AMI

[anny9699]

Hi,

I installed shiny-server on aws AMI. When I tried to download file from s3 using

system("s3cmd get path-to-file")

It failed, and gave me the error "ERROR: Skipping path-to-file: Permission denied". However when I asked only to list files, such as

system("s3cmd ls path-to-file")

it was working fine. Also when I was downloading files from terminal or rstudio server or R console (installed on the same AMI) it could also download. So I assume it was due to some shiny-server permission issue. I changed the "run as" to root, but it still failed to download.

Could anyone have some suggestions on this?

Thanks a lot!

[Joe Cheng]

Shiny Server won't run apps as root (at least I don't think so).

If you really want to do this, you need to make sure the "shiny" user has write permissions to path-to-file. I'd encourage you to limit the write permissions to the minimal set of directories that are necessary (e.g. don't let the app itself be modified by the "shiny" user, just a specific directory where the data will live).

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[Anny Chen]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the explanation. However I could download the file from rstudio server (through browser on my local machine) . So rstudio server has the permision but shiny-server doesn't have? 

Also I didn't limit permission on the users as long as they have the access key and access secret key for the s3 bucket. Is there some place in shiny-server that I should specifically set permission? 

Thanks a lot!

[Joe Cheng]

Your RStudio Server runs with the permissions of your user account. Shiny Server (by default) runs as a low-privileged user named "shiny", this is because it's expected to face less trusted traffic than RStudio Server.

The permission isn't in shiny-server itself; it's on the filesystem. Can you run this command from the shell?

ls -ld path-to-data-directory

where path-to-data-directory is replaced with the directory where your data should live?