How to copy a file from a remote server to a local machine?

Question

In my terminal shell, I ssh'ed into a remote server, and I cd to the directory I want.

Now in this directory, there is a file called table that I want to copy to my local machine /home/me/Desktop.

How can I do this?

I tried scp table /home/me/Desktop but it gave an error about no such file or directory.

Does anyone know how to do this?

If you find yourself copying with scp often, you can mount the remote directory in your file browser and drag-and-drop. On my Ubuntu 15 host, it's under the menu bar "Go" > "Enter Location" > debian@10.42.4.66:/home/debian. Alternatively, one can use sshfs to mount the remote machine's filesystem on the host. But that setup is a little more involved. — ConvexMartian, Nov 28 '16 at 19:46
Give rsync a try. It's great both for local and remote copies, gives you copy progress, etc. An example — sakisk, Jun 08 '17 at 19:23

score 789 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 28 '16 at 20:19

789

The syntax for scp is:

If you are on the computer from which you want to send file to a remote computer:

scp /file/to/send username@remote:/where/to/put

Here the remote can be a FQDN or an IP address.

On the other hand if you are on the computer wanting to receive file from a remote computer:

scp username@remote:/file/to/send /where/to/put

scp can also send files between two remote hosts:

scp username@remote_1:/file/to/send username@remote_2:/where/to/put

So the basic syntax is:

scp username@source:/location/to/file username@destination:/where/to/put

You can read man scp to get more ideas on this.

edited Oct 28 '16 at 20:19

Rui F Ribeiro

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answered Mar 05 '15 at 02:45

heemayl

56,300

5

What if I want to copy multiple files? I added a space and just used another /file/to/send Thanks for your awesome answer! – camdixon Jul 12 '16 at 18:30
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scp -r will copy recursively. – Henry Aug 10 '16 at 21:10
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What i want to copy the files from network to my VM ...how to achieve the same using scp – Sushivam Nov 16 '16 at 12:48
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@heemayl +1 for the good answer. Thought to add that in the case that it is a secure connection (that requires an authentication) you can use the following (for copying file from local to remote): scp -i mykey.pem somefile.txt root@remotehost.ip.address:/some/folder/in/remote – Guy Avraham Oct 19 '17 at 10:48
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Use scp -P 123 to specify custom port – ᴍᴇʜᴏᴠ Dec 28 '17 at 12:52
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If i have an ssh session active, then i have to exit ssh session to scp from remote to local. is there any other way? – unknownerror Feb 01 '19 at 07:14
Here's a brief video showing the process, including the bit about the secure connection. – Brady Dowling Aug 20 '19 at 00:05
what if we require to login to ssh by .pem file, is there a way to copy file while we stay inside the connection as i'll be able to do it as sudo – Habib Rehman Jan 29 '22 at 20:10
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This doesn't cover the case mentioned in the question, where you are ssh'd into a remote server and want to copy a file from that remote server to a local machine. Neither does the video mentioned in this previous comment. How can one use scp or rsync when already ssh'd into a remote server? – Mike Eng Mar 17 '22 at 00:58

fugitive · Answer 2 · 2019-11-20T12:53:01.000

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You can use rsync as an alternative. It is mainly for syncing files.. but you can use it for this purpose as well.

rsync -avzh --stats --progress remoteuser@remoteip:/path/  localpath

to add ssh options:

rsync -e "ssh -P $port_value" remoteuser@remoteip:/path/  localpath

--progress and --stats are useful for real-time display of transfer.

I think it a better option then SCP, since it skips already transferred files, which is noticeable when you're copy-ing lot of files.

edited Nov 20 '19 at 12:53

answered Jan 13 '17 at 22:29

fugitive

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What if the remoteip is in a network? – AndrewRMillar Mar 24 '22 at 15:34

score 25 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 24 '15 at 07:00

25

scp root@10.240.179.4:/root/Jmeter/reports.jtl Downloads/

edited Sep 24 '15 at 07:00

jasonwryan

73,126

answered Sep 24 '15 at 05:52

user135545

251

score 14 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 07 '16 at 22:31

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scp username@ipaddress:pathtofile localsystempath

scp sadananad@ipaddress:/home/demo/public_html/myproject.tar.gz .

If your using with port:

scp -Pportnumber username@ipaddress:pathtofile localsystempath 

scp -P2233 sadananad@ipaddress:/home/demo/public_html/myproject.tar.gz .

edited Jul 07 '16 at 22:31

Kusalananda

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answered May 26 '16 at 18:13

Sadanand Kenganal

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This will copy the file to the same remote directory. – Max Yudin Oct 12 '18 at 11:02

onur güngör · Answer 5 · 2020-02-22T10:45:01.293

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If you completely trust everyone in the network and you can connect a port of the destination machine directly, you can use netcat: nc.

Let's say the IP address of the destination machine is 192.168.1.123

On the destination run:

nc -l -p 7777 0.0.0.0 | tar zxvf - -C dest_dir

You can choose a different port, and also bind to another IP of your interfaces, 0.0.0.0 just catches on all interfaces.

On the source run:

tar zcvf - filename | nc 192.168.1.123 7777

IMHO, this is the fastest possible way to send a file from one computer to another using digital networks.

The arguments and command line options might slightly change between different versions of nc and tar, but it will definitely work with recent Linux distributions.

edited Feb 22 '20 at 10:45

answered May 21 '17 at 16:44

onur güngör

1,284

I think your tar parameters are wrong, the source should not have "x" and could use "v" as well, for parity. – Mattes D Feb 21 '20 at 09:11
@MattesD: Thank you, you are right, fixed it. – onur güngör Feb 22 '20 at 10:45

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 08 '19 at 14:27

On Linux, to copy a folder and its content from the user (root in this example) directory, to a folder in the local user directory, I run this command on the local machine:

scp -r root@178.62.54.83:~/folderinremoteuserdir ~/folderinlocaluserdir

Note the ~/ which I often seem to forget...

How to copy a file from a remote server to a local machine?

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