"not regular file" when trying to scp .gitignore file

Question

The remote directory already contains a .gitignore file, which I want to overwrite and upload a new one. After doing:

scp -P[portnumber] root@domain.com:path/for/file/ location/of/file/.gitignore

I received the following message:

not a regular file

What do I need to do to copy the "not regular file" as well as overwrite the existing one? I'm assuming this question is very basic considering that I can't find the answer anywhere. Thank you!

I have read the following, similar question but it doesn't fully answer my question. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/52634/error-using-scp-not-a-regular-file — Christia, Nov 03 '16 at 19:29
The syntax is scp <source> <destination>. Did you mean to copy from location/of/file/.gitignore to within root@domain.com:path/for/file/? If so, you should reverse the order of parameters. — dhag, Nov 03 '16 at 19:33
I was answering my own question while you were adding this comment. This was actually the source of the problem and if I had known it was that simple, I wouldn't have posted. Sorry! Thanks so much. — Christia, Nov 03 '16 at 19:37
Possible duplicate of How to copy a file from a remote server to a local machine? — heemayl, Nov 03 '16 at 20:51

Christia · Answer 1 · 2016-11-03T19:34:24.967

1

I had my location and destination backwards. I changed it to:

scp -P[portnumber] /path/to/.gitignore root@domain.com:/path/to/destination

That worked!

edited Nov 03 '16 at 19:34

answered Nov 03 '16 at 19:24

Christia

215

"not regular file" when trying to scp .gitignore file

1 Answers1