SCP: Secure Copy

Secure Copy, aka scp, is part of the SSH utilities that allows encrypted copying between networked systems. It has the power to copy single files or full directories. The general syntax is:

scp user1@source.host:/path/of/file user2@destination.host:/path/of/source

If user1 and user2 have the same login on both machines and it the same as that of the local machine, the names can be omitted.

scp options that are the most useful are:

-p : Preserve modification times, access times, and modes
-r : Recursively copy entire directories.
-v : Be verbose for debugging.

These exercises outline some typical usage.

Exercises:

• This one copies a single file from the server.acme to local:

  scp server.acme:/tmp/acl.tgz .
   acl.tgz                                  100%  579KB 390.9KB/s   00:01
  

• Copy a directory from server.acme to local, and preserve all attributes:

  scp -rp server.acme:/tmp/www .
    blacklist.txt                             100% 6160    73.4KB/s   00:00
    goldlist.txt                              100%    9     0.1KB/s   00:00
  

• Same as above, but move the destination to /tmp:

  scp -rp server.acme:/tmp/www /tmp/
    blacklist.txt                             100% 6160    73.4KB/s   00:00
    goldlist.txt                              100%    9     0.1KB/s   00:00
  

• Same as above, reverse the role of source and destination: This copies the file /tmp/xyz to the server’s /tmp dir:

  scp -rp /tmp/xyz server.acme:/tmp/.
    blacklist.txt                             100% 6160    73.4KB/s   00:00
    goldlist.txt                              100%    9     0.1KB/s   00:00