scp

Copy files between computers over SSH

What it does

scp works like cp, except one of the paths is on another machine: user@host:path. You can send a file to the server or fetch one from it by swapping the arguments: scp deploy@web-01:/var/log/app.log ..

Folders are copied with -r. The port is a capital -P, unlike in ssh. For large folders and repeated copies rsync is handier: it sends only the files that changed.

Careful. scp overwrites a file with the same name at the destination without asking.

Syntax

scp <file> <user>@<host>:<path>
scp <user>@<host>:<path> <destination>
scp -r <folder> <user>@<host>:<path>

Examples

• Copy backup.tar.gz to the server 203.0.113.10, into /tmp

  scp backup.tar.gz deploy@203.0.113.10:/tmp/

  same as: scp backup.tar.gz deploy@203.0.113.10:/tmp

  • scp — copy over SSH
  • backup.tar.gz — what to copy
  • deploy@203.0.113.10:/tmp/ — where: user@server:path

Related commands

• ssh — Connect to a remote server
• tar — Pack files into an archive or unpack one
• du — Find out how much space a folder takes

Practise · All commands