Question

I’m trying to delete a folder created as a result of a MapReduce job. Other files in the bucket delete just fine, but this folder won’t delete. When I try to delete it from the console, the progress bar next to its status just stays at 0. Have made multiple attempts, including with logout/login in between.

Answer 1

First and foremost, Amazon S3 doesn’t actually have a native concept of folders/directories, rather is a flat storage architecture comprised of buckets and objects/keys only – the directory style presentation seen in most tools for S3 (including the AWS Management Console itself) is based solely on convention, i.e. simulating a hierarchy for objects with identical prefixes – see my answer to How to specify an object expiration prefix that doesn’t match the directory? for more details on this architecture, including quotes/references from the AWS documentation.

Accordingly, your problem might stem from a tool using a different convention for simulating this hierarchy, see for example the following answers in the AWS forums:

• Ivan Moiseev’s answer to the related question Cannot delete file from bucket, where he suggests to use another tool to inspect whether you might have such a problem and remedy it accordingly.

• The AWS team response to What are these _$folder$ objects? – This is a convention used by a number of tools including Hadoop to make directories in S3. They’re primarily needed to designate empty directories. One might have preferred a more aesthetic scheme, but well that is the way that these tools do it.

Good luck!