scp.md

SCP Command

SCP or Secure Copy is used to copy files to and from a machine over an ssh connection. Files are encrypted while transfer so, its safe. SCP uses ':' to differentiate between

With scp, you can copy a file or directory:

1. From your local system to a remote system.

2. From a remote system to your local system.

3. Between two remote systems from your local system.

# the basic structure of the command is like
scp [OPTION] [user@]SRC_HOST:]file1 [user@]DEST_HOST:]file2

# copy a file to a remote system from local system
scp -i keyFile /home/file.txt [email protected]:/root/user/files

# change the name at destination
scp /home/file.txt [email protected]:/root/user/files/newfile.txt

# if ssh is on non default port
scp -P 2342 file.txt dev:/root/user/files    # dev is configured in config

# copy a directory and all its files
scp -r /home/files dev:/root/files

# when using wildcards to avoid shell expansion, wrap in ""
scp "~/Projects/*" dev:/user/files

Copy a remote file to local system.

# copy to local system from a remote system
scp dev:/remote/file.txt /home/shoaib/txt1.txt

Copy files from one remote system to another remote system.

# take file from host1 to host2
scp [email protected]:/files/file.txt [email protected]:/files

# to route the traffic from local machine where command was executed use '-3'
scp -3 [email protected]:/files/file.txt [email protected]:/files