How do I copy a folder from remote to local using scp?
How do I copy a folder from remote to local using scp?
Question
How do I copy a folder from remote to local host using scp
?
I use ssh
to log in my server.
Then, I would like to copy the remote folder foo
to local /home/user/Desktop
.
How do I achieve this?
Accepted Answer
scp -r [email protected]:/path/to/foo /home/user/Desktop/
By not including the trailing '/' at the end of foo, you will move the directory itself (including contents), rather than only the contents of the directory.
From man scp
(See online manual)
-r Recursively copy entire directories
Read more… Read less…
To use full power of scp you need to go through next steps:
Then, for example if you have this ~/.ssh/config:
Host test
User testuser
HostName test-site.com
Port 22022
Host prod
User produser
HostName production-site.com
Port 22022
you'll save yourself from password entry and simplify scp syntax like this:
scp -r prod:/path/foo /home/user/Desktop # copy to local
scp -r prod:/path/foo test:/tmp # copy from remote prod to remote test
More over, you will be able to use remote path-completion:
scp test:/var/log/ # press tab twice
Display all 151 possibilities? (y or n)
Update:
For enabling remote bash-completion you need to have bash-shell on both <source>
and <target>
hosts, and properly working bash-completion. For more information see related questions:
How to enable autocompletion for remote paths when using scp?
SCP filename tab completion
To copy all from Local Location to Remote Location (Upload)
scp -r /path/from/destination [email protected]:/path/to/destination
To copy all from Remote Location to Local Location (Download)
scp -r [email protected]:/path/from/destination /path/to/destination
Custom Port where xxxx
is custom port number
scp -r -P xxxx [email protected]:/path/from/destination /path/to/destination
Copy on current directory from Remote to Local
scp -r [email protected]:/path/from/file .
Help:
-r
Recursively copy all directories and files- Always use full location from
/
, Get full location bypwd
scp
will replace all existing fileshostname
will be hostname or IP address- if custom port is needed (besides port 22) use
-P portnumber
- . (dot) - it means current working directory, So download/copy from server and paste here only.
Note: Sometimes the custom port will not work due to the port not being allowed in the firewall, so make sure that custom port is allowed in the firewall for incoming and outgoing connection
What I always use is:
scp -r [email protected]:/path/to/server/source/folder/ .
. (dot) : it means current folder
. so copy from server and paste here only.
IP : can be an IP address like 125.55.41.311
or it can be host like ns1.mysite.com
.
Better to first compress catalog on remote server:
tar czfP backup.tar.gz /path/to/catalog
Secondly, download from remote:
scp [email protected]:/path/to/backup.tar.gz .
At the end, extract the files:
tar -xzvf backup.tar.gz
And if you have one hell of a files to download from the remote location and if you don't much care about security, try changing the scp default encryption (Triple-DES) to something like 'blowfish'.
This will reduce file copying time drastically.
scp -c blowfish -r [email protected]:/path/to/foo /home/user/Desktop/