SCP Tips

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20170216 : How to create ssh aliases by Alexander Yancharuk ( Dec 4 2013 , stackoverflow.com )
• 20151207 : How to resume a large SCP file transfer on Linux ( Ask Xmodulo )
• 20140508 : 8 Cool Ways To Use SCP ( October 14, 2011 , blog.urfix.com )

Old News ;-)

[Feb 16, 2017] How to create ssh aliases by Alexander Yancharuk

Dec 4 2013 | stackoverflow.com

To use full power of scp you need to go through next steps:

1. Public key authorisation
2. Create ssh aliases

Then, for example if you'll 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

[Dec 07, 2015] How to resume a large SCP file transfer on Linux

Ask Xmodulo

Originally based on BSD RCP protocol, SCP (Secure copy) is a mechanism that allows you to transfer a file between two end points over a secure SSH connection. However, as a simple secure copy protocol, SCP does not understand range-request or partial transfer like HTTP does. As such, popular SCP implementations like the scp command line tool cannot resume aborted downloads from lost network connections.

If you want to resume an interrupted SCP transfer, you need to rely on other programs which support range requests. One popular such program is rsync. Similar to scp, rsync can also transfer files over SSH.

Suppose you were trying to download a file (bigdata.tgz) from a remote host remotehost.com using scp, but the SCP transfer was stopped in the middle due to a stalled SSH connection. You can use the following rsync command to easily resume the stopped transfer. Note that the remote server must have rsync installed as well.

$ cd /path/to/directory/of/partially_downloaded_file
$ rsync -P -rsh=ssh [email protected]:bigdata.tgz ./bigdata.tgz

The "-P" option is the same as "--partial --progress", allowing rsync to work with partially downloaded files. The "-rsh=ssh" option tells rsync to use ssh as a remote shell.

[May 08, 2014] 8 Cool Ways To Use SCP

October 14, 2011 | blog.urfix.com

Edit a file on a remote host using vim

vim scp://username@host//path/to/somefile

Colored diff ( via vim ) on 2 remotes files on your local computer.

vimdiff scp://[email protected]//etc/snmp/snmpd.conf scp://[email protected]//etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

Restrict the bandwidth for the SCP command

scp -l10 [email protected]:/home/urfix/* .

the command is obvious, I know, but maybe not everyone knows that using the parameter "-l" you can limit the use of bandwidth command scp.
In this example fetch all files from the directory zutaniddu and I copy them locally using only 10 Kbs

Compare a remote file with a local file

vimdiff  scp://[@]/

Easily scp a file back to the host you're connecting from

mecp () { scp "$@" ${SSH_CLIENT%% *}:Desktop/; }

Place in .bashrc and invoke like this: "mecp /path/to/file", and it will copy the specified file(s) back to the desktop of the host you're ssh'ing in from. To easily upload a file from the host you're ssh'ing in from use this:

ucp (){ scp ${SSH_CLIENT%% *}:Desktop/upload/* .; }

scp file from hostb to hostc while logged into hosta

scp user@hostb:file user@hostc:

While at the command line of of hosta, scp a file from remote hostb to remote hostc. This saves the step of logging into hostb and then issuing the scp command to hostc.

Copy something to multiple SSH hosts with a Bash loop

for h in host1 host2 host3 host4 ; { scp file user@$h:/destination_path/ ; }

Just a quick and simple one to demonstrate Bash For loop. Copies 'file' to multiple ssh hosts.

scp with compression.

scp -C 10.0.0.4:/tmp/backup.sql /path/to/backup.sql

Etc

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Last modified: March, 12, 2019