Troubleshooting

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.

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.

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: Requests to Cloud Storage need to access accounts.google.com for OAuth2 token exchanges, and *.googleapis.com for storage requests. If you are accessing Cloud Storage through a proxy server, you must allow access to these domains. 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 accounts.google.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.

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 my content served through HTTPS.

Solution: While you can serve your content through HTTPS using direct URIs such as https://storage.googleapis.com/my-bucket/my-object, when hosting a static website using a CNAME redirect, Cloud Storage only supports HTTP. To serve your content through a custom domain over SSL, set up a load balancer, use a third-party Content Delivery Network with Cloud Storage, or 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.

Inaccessible page

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 overwritten 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.

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:

1. Open the Cloud Storage browser in the Google Cloud Platform Console.
   Open the Cloud Storage browser
2. Click the Activate Cloud Shell button at the top of the Google Cloud Platform Console.
3. 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.
4. 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.

What's next

• Learn about your support options.
• Find answers to additional questions in the Cloud Storage FAQ.