eolas/zk/Configuring_Garage_object_storage.md

tags	created
S3 AWS	Monday, August 11, 2025

What is Garage?

Garage is software that enables you to create an S3-like object storage solution outside of the AWS infrastructure on servers you maintain yourself.

It incorporates methods and operations from the S3 API and SDK (e.g. GetBucket, ListBuckets etc. ) and is compatible with the awscli tool.

I set Garage up on my VPS so that I can leverage object storage as and when I need it. My primary motivation was to be able to access images from a public URL from within my home-made Zettelkasten software. Configuring unauthenticated public access is not as straightforward as S3 but it is possible, as I will demonstrate.

Installation

First I installed Garage and added the binary to the $PATH on my VPS running Debian.

wget https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/_releases/v2.0.0/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/garage
chmod +x garage
sudo mv garage /usr/local/bin

Configuration file

I created the following config file at /etc/garage.toml:

metadata_dir = "/data/sqlite/garage-metadata"
data_dir = "/mnt/storagebox_alpha/garage"
db_engine = "sqlite"

replication_factor = 1

rpc_bind_addr = "[::]:3901"
rpc_public_addr = "127.0.0.1:3901"
rpc_secret = "<uuid>"

[s3_api]
s3_region = "garage"
api_bind_addr = "0.0.0.0:3900"
root_domain = ".s3.garage.localhost"

[s3_web]
bind_addr = "[::]:3902"
root_domain = ".web.garage.localhost"
index = "index.html"

The key points:

• data_dir is where the bucket data will be stored. This is mapped to my network-attached storage device on the VPS (storagebox_alpha)
• Garage allows you to replicate and distribute your data over multiple zones for security and redundancy. I don't need this so the replication_factor is 1
• Garage runs locally on the server on the 3901 port. Later I will expose this to the Internet via my reverse proxy.

Running the Garage server

Having created the config file, I can start the server:

garage server

You'll notice all the standard AWS S3 methods being invoked in the logs:

// ADD PICTURE

I also confirm the instance is running:

garage status

==== HEALTHY NODES ====
ID                Hostname          Address         Tags  Zone  Capacity          DataAvail  Version
<redacted>        self-host-server  127.0.0.1:3901              NO ROLE ASSIGNED             v2.0.0

In order to start the Garage server automatically on boot, I created a systemd service. This way I don't need to restart Garage whenever I restart my VPS.

[Unit]
Description=Garage Object Storage
After=network.target
Wants=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=thomas
Group=thomas
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/garage server
WorkingDirectory=/data/sqlite
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=journal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I killed the earlier instance of the server and then activated the systemd service:

sudo systemctl enable garage
sudo systemctl start garage

Creating a layout

Creating a bucket