Troubleshooting

400: Bad Request

Issue: While performing a resumable upload, I received this error and the message Failed to parse Content-Range header.

Solution: The value you used in your Content-Range header is invalid. For example, Content-Range: */* is invalid and instead should be specified as Content-Range: bytes */*. If you receive this error, your current resumable upload is no longer active, and you must start a new resumable upload.

401: Unauthorized

Issue: Requests to a public bucket directly, or via Cloud CDN, are failing with a HTTP 401: Unauthorized and an Authentication Required response.

Solution: Check that your client, or any intermediate proxy, is not adding an Authorization header to requests to Cloud Storage. Any request with an Authorization header, even if empty, is validated as if it were an authentication attempt.

403: Account Disabled

Issue: I tried to create a bucket but got a 403 Account Disabled error.

Solution: This error indicates that you have not yet turned on billing for the associated project. For steps for enabling billing, see Enable billing for a project.

If billing is turned on and you continue to receive this error message, you can reach out to support with your project ID and a description of your problem.

403: Access Denied

Issue: I tried to list the objects in my bucket but got a 403 Access Denied error and/or a message similar to Anonymous caller does not have storage.objects.list access.

Solution: Check that your credentials are correct. For example, if you are using gsutil, check that the credentials stored in your .boto file are accurate. Also, confirm that gsutil is using the .boto file you expect by using the command gsutil version -l and checking the config path(s) entry.

Assuming you are using the correct credentials, are your requests being routed through a proxy, using HTTP (instead of HTTPS)? If so, check whether your proxy is configured to remove the Authorization header from such requests. If so, make sure you are using HTTPS instead of HTTP for your requests.

409: Conflict

Issue: I tried to create a bucket but received the following error:

409 Conflict. Sorry, that name is not available. Please try a different one.

Solution: The bucket name you tried to use (e.g. gs://cats or gs://dogs) is already taken. Cloud Storage has a global namespace so you may not name a bucket with the same name as an existing bucket. Choose a name that is not being used.

Proxy servers

Issue: I'm connecting through a proxy server, what do I need to do?

Solution: To access Cloud Storage through a proxy server, you must allow access to these domains:

accounts.google.com for creating OAuth2 authentication tokens via gsutil config
oauth2.googleapis.com for performing OAuth2 token exchanges
*.googleapis.com for storage requests

If your proxy server or security policy doesn't support whitelisting by domain and instead requires whitelisting by IP network block, we strongly recommend that you configure your proxy server for all Google IP address ranges. You can find the address ranges by querying WHOIS data at ARIN. As a best practice, you should periodically review your proxy settings to ensure they match Google's IP addresses.

We do not recommend configuring your proxy with individual IP addresses you obtain from one-time lookups of oauth2.googleapis.com and storage.googleapis.com. Because Google services are exposed via DNS names that map to a large number of IP addresses that can change over time, configuring your proxy based on a one-time lookup may lead to failures to connect to Cloud Storage.

If your requests are being routed through a proxy server, you may need to check with your network administrator to ensure that the Authorization header containing your credentials is not stripped out by the proxy. Without the Authorization header, your requests are rejected and you receive a MissingSecurityHeader error.

`gsutil stat`

Issue: I tried to use the gsutil stat command to display object status for a subdirectory and got an error.

Solution: Cloud Storage uses a flat namespace to store objects in buckets. While you can use slashes ("/") in object names to make it appear as if objects are in a hierarchical structure, the gsutil stat command treats a trailing slash as part of the object name.

For example, if you run the command gsutil -q stat gs://my-bucket/my-object/, gsutil looks up information about the object my-object/ (with a trailing slash), as opposed to operating on objects nested under my-bucket/my-object/. Unless you actually have an object with that name, the operation fails.

For subdirectory listing, use the gsutil ls instead.

`gcloud auth`

Issue: I tried to authenticate gsutil using the gcloud auth command, but I still cannot access my buckets or objects.

Solution: Your system may have both the stand-alone and Cloud SDK versions of gsutil installed on it. Run the command gsutil version -l and check the value for using cloud sdk. If False, your system is using the stand-alone version of gsutil when you run commands. You can either remove this version of gsutil from your system, or you can authenticate using the gsutil config command.

Bucket configured as a website

The following are common issues that you may encounter when setting up a bucket to host a static website.

HTTPS serving

Issue: I want to serve my content over HTTPS without using a load balancer.

Solution: You can serve static content through HTTPS using direct URIs such as https://storage.googleapis.com/my-bucket/my-object. For other options to serve your content through a custom domain over SSL, you can:

Use a third-party Content Delivery Network with Cloud Storage.
Serve your static website content from Firebase Hosting instead of Cloud Storage.

Domain verification

Issue: I can't verify my domain.

Solution: Normally, the verification process in Search Console directs you to upload a file to your domain, but you may not have a way to do this without first having an associated bucket, which you can only create after you have performed domain verification.

In this case, verify ownership using the Domain name provider verification method. See Ownership verification for steps to accomplish this. This verification can be done before the bucket is created.

Issue: I get an Access denied error message for a web page served by my website.

Solution: Check that the object is shared publicly. If it is not, see Making Data Public for instructions on how to do this.

If you previously uploaded and shared an object, but then upload a new version of it, then you must reshare the object publicly. This is because the public permission is replaced with the new upload.

Content download

Issue: I am prompted to download my page's content, instead of being able to view it in my browser.

Solution: If you specify a MainPageSuffix as an object that does not have a web content type, then instead of serving the page, site visitors are prompted to download the content. To resolve this issue, update the content-type metadata entry to a suitable value, such as text/html. See Editing object metadata for instructions on how to do this.

Content download using `storage.cloud.google.com`

Issue: I am downloading my public content from storage.cloud.google.com, and I receive a 403 - Forbidden error when I navigate to the public object

https://storage.cloud.google.com/BUCKET_NAME/OBJECT_NAME

in the browser.

Solution: Using storage.cloud.google.com to download objects is known as authenticated browser downloads; it always uses cookie-based authentication, even when objects are made publicly accessible to allUsers. If you have enabled audit logs for Cloud Storage, one of the restrictions of that feature is the disablement of authenticated browser downloads; such downloads result in a 403 response when audit logs are enabled.

To avoid this issue, either audit logs, or switch to direct API calls which support unauthenticated downloads.

301: Moved Permanently

Issue: Accessing a directory path returns an empty object and a 301 HTTP response code.

Solution: If your browser downloads a zero byte object and you get a 301 HTTP response code when accessing a directory, such as http://www.example.com/dir/, your bucket most likely contains an empty object of that name. To check that this is the case and fix the issue:

Open the Cloud Storage browser in the Google Cloud Console.
Open the Cloud Storage browser
Click the Activate Cloud Shell button at the top of the Google Cloud Console.
Run gsutil ls -R gs://www.example.com/dir/. If the output includes http://www.example.com/dir/, you have an empty object at that location.
Remove the empty object with the command: gsutil rm gs://www.example.com/dir/

You can now access http://www.example.com/dir/ and have it return that directory's index.html file instead of the empty object.

Understanding errors in the Cloud Storage browser

Issue: When using the Cloud Storage browser to perform an operation, I get a generic error message. For example, I see an error message when trying to delete a bucket, but I don't see details for why the operation failed.

Solution: Use the Google Cloud Console's notifications to see detailed information about the failed operation:

Click the Notifications button in the Google Cloud Console header.

A dropdown displays the most recent operations performed by the Google Cloud Console.
Click the item you want to find out more about.

A page opens up and displays detailed information about the operation.
Click on each row to expand the detailed error information.

Below is an example of error information for a failed bucket deletion operation, which explains that a bucket retention policy prevented the deletion of the bucket.