A dumb question, I used local docker lakefs and connect it to s3 and created a bucket and connect it. It works perfectly fine. I removed the lakefs container and created a new one. How can I attach my lakefs to the same s3 again? Is there an option like like a load repo instead of creating?

Yes, you can use dump_refs and restore_refs. You can use lakectl or Python API to do that. Here is a sample using Python API (you will do Step # 2, 4 & 5 in this sample): https://github.com/treeverse/lakeFS-samples/blob/main/01_standalone_examples/migrate-or-clone-repo/Migrate%20or%20Clone%20AWS%20Repo.ipynb

It looks like it creates a new s3 for it. Can I use the same s3 that once a repo was attached to it?

Yes, you can use same s3. But sorry, this solution will not work for you because you deleted old container so you can’t dump refs now

lakefs use 3 components: • Web UI + S3 gateway server • Database server • back end Storage In your case, S3 is your back end storage. But the local docker container will contains the Database server (adn the Web UI + S3 Gateway). Without it, you won;t be able to linked back to the data in your S3.