How To Copy A File/Directory From Local To Remote Machine In Linux / FreeBSD?

This post was last updated on August 1st, 2020 at 04:20 pm

There are various ways to copy a file or directory from remote to local or local to the remote machine. One of them is copying by using the scp command. The SCP stands for Secure copy is a remote file copy program. It copies files between hosts on a network. SCP is based on SSH, It uses the same authentication and provides the same security as SSH. SCP asks for a password if it needed for authentication. While copying a file, if the file already exists on the remote system then it will replace the content of that file.

Syntax of SCP Command

The syntax of scp is similar to cp command which is used locally for copying a file –

Copying a file to host-

scp source_file [email protected]:directory/target_file

Copying a directory from the host –

scp [email protected]:directory/source_file target_file

scp -r [email protected]:directory/source_dir target_dir

If the remote host uses a port other than 22 then it can be specified in the command-

scp -p port _no [email protected]:directory/source_file target_file

Options used with scp command

Example of using scp command

Some examples of using scp command are given below-

Copying a single file from local to the remote machine

To copy a file name file.txt to remote system’s /home directory, use the following command in your terminal.

scp /home/file.txt [email protected]:/home

Copying a single file from remote to the local system

Now if you want to copy a file name file.txt from home directory of the remote system to local systems’s /home directory. Use the following command in your terminal.

scp [email protected]:/home/file.txt /home/

Copying multiple files from local to the remote machine

Instead of copying the whole directory containing multiple files. You can copy more than one file by using the following command.

scp /home/file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt [email protected]:/home

Copying multiple files from remote to the local machine

Similarly, if you want to copy more than one file without copying the whole directory from remote to the local machine. Then you should use the following command in your terminal.

scp [email protected]:/home/file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt /home/

Copying a folder

Now if you want to copy a directory name dir1 to the remote system then use the following command in your terminal.

scp -r /home/dir1 [email protected]:/home/

Copying file to a specific port

If you want to use a specific port then use option -P (in uppercase) in your command. Use the following command in your terminal.

scp -P 21 [email protected]:/home/file.txt /home/

To know more about scp and the options see the manual page of scp. To display it use the following command in your terminal.

man scp