CommandException: arg [...] does not name a directory, bucket, or bucket subdir. for a directory on Compute Engine

Question

I am trying to use gsutils command to deploy changes from CircleCI to a directory on my Compute Engine instance. The command I am using is: gsutil -m rsync -d -r dev/ [VM_INSTANCE_NAME]:/var/www/dev/

but I get the following error:

CommandException: arg [...] does not name a directory, bucket, or bucket subdir.

Based on this, I should be able to deploy to the directory on Compute Engine.

Answer 1

Alioua is correct. I understand where you're trying to refer to the document but that would only work if it the directories were local. If you're using CircleCI, you'd be better off using a service account and assign it the correct IAM permissions.

Although a normal rsync would work, you could also use gcloud compute scp or gcloud compute copy-files. gsutil rsync would only work with buckets or 'across local directories'.