"mc alias set ..." error and referenced material lacks the information required to resolve the error

[sen-io]

Expected behavior

If I'm told a command value is invalid, I should be told why

Actual behavior

When running mc alias set minio http://localhost:9005 senyo senyo I received the error:

mc: Invalid secret key senyo. Invalid arguments provided, please refer mc <command> -h for relevant documentation.

Unfortunately the help (-h) command does not show information that informs me why the secret key I provided is invalid.

Through experimentation I discovered that it was the length of the string that was not acceptable (looks like a certain number of characters are required), but in cases like this, if we show an error saying a string is not valid, we should let the user know why. Also, when looking in our docs page , I did not see any mention of secret key requirements either.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

Run mc alias set minio http://localhost:9005 admin tiny

mc --version

mc version RELEASE.2024-02-24T01-33-20Z (commit-id=f17313e7ab892fa5c7561a63296b68c1691f9b2b)
Runtime: go1.21.7 darwin/arm64
Copyright (c) 2015-2024 MinIO, Inc.
License GNU AGPLv3 https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

System information

[jiuker]

secret key should more than 8 characters

[sen-io]

@jiuker I discovered that through experimentation. The request of this ticket is to make that clear in documentation or the error itself so people don't have to guess and try to figure out what is wrong with it by trial and error.

[jiuker]

You can setup minio with that secret key?

[sen-io]

minio alias set ... Seems to work with any secret key as long as it's the appropriate character length.