I can scp files to a remote host, but if I try to scp -r a directory it does not work
scp -r mydir me#remote.host:/where/the/dir/has/to/go/
scp: realpath /whatever/mydir: No such file
scp: upload "/whatever/mydir": path canonicalization failed
scp: failed to upload directory cf2t to /where/the/dir/has/to/go/
I thought it was some issue with globbing, so I quoted different parts of the damn command to no avail.
on remote.host: mkdir -p /where/the/dir/has/to/go/
on local host: scp -r mydir me#remote.host:/where/the/dir/has/to/go/
Im using codeship for deployment and it provides a way to access the build machine with ssh:
ssh rof#1.2.3.4 -p 65503
This works fine and I get into the machine. Now I want to copy a file from the remote machine to my local machine. Im trying:
sudo scp -p 65503 -v -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa rof#1.2.3.4:~/home/rof/cache/app.js /
And I get a whole host of errors:
cp: 65503: No such file or directory
cp: -v: No such file or directory
cp: -i: No such file or directory
rof#23.20.112.101: Permission denied (publickey).
I dont know why it's saying No such file or directory for each argument.
id_rsa exists and is in ~/.ssh/ directory.
The Permission Denied error appears to be a separate issue.
Any ideas?
The first problem I see from looking at the documentation:
man scp:
-P port
Specifies the port to connect to on the remote host. Note that
this option is written with a capital ‘P’, because -p is
already reserved for preserving the times and modes of the
file.
-p Preserves modification times, access times, and modes from the
original file.
So scp -p is taken to mean "copy while preserving timestamps" and 65503 is the name of (one of the) source file(s).
Try scp -P 65503 instead.
I am trying to transfer a file using in remote desktop which will create the directory tree as well in remote desktop as specified.I am using below command but its not working when directory is not present in remote server.
rsync -avzhe ssh --progress /root/BP/temp/temp.txt root#host2:/root/BP/temp2
Where /root/BP/temp/temp.txt is available in local but /root/BP/temp2 this path is not peresent in remote server.
I am getting below error :
rsync: change_dir#3 "/root/BP" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: errors selecting input/output files, dirs (code 3) at main.c(625) [Receiver=3.0.9]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (9 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(605) [sender=3.0.9]
If you need to move files to a non existent path on the remote server, you must either:
Model the path and file structure locally and sync a common "ancestor".
This is requires only 1 step
Create the missing directories locally and sync them first then sync the files.
This requires 2 steps
To use the OP's specific example of:
rsync -avzhe ssh --progress /root/BP/temp/temp.txt root#host2:/root/BP/temp2
You would instead do:
# assuming that /root already exists on the remote server
mkdir -p /root/BP/temp/or_wherever/BP/temp2
mv /root/BP/temp/temp.txt /root/BP/temp/or_wherever/BP/temp2
rsync -avzhe ssh --progress /root/BP/temp/or_wherever/BP root#host2:/root/
But if for some reason you cannot move the file in question, you must use the second option:
# assuming that /root already exists on the remote server
mkdir -p /root/BP/temp/or_wherever/BP/temp2
# Notice there is no `/` after the `or_wherever/BP` in the next command
rsync -avzhe ssh --progress /root/BP/temp/or_wherever/BP root#host2:/root/
rsync -avzhe ssh --progress /root/BP/temp/temp.txt root#host2:/root/BP/temp2/
I'd like to copy files from/to remote server in different directories.
For example, I want to run these 4 commands at once.
scp remote:A/1.txt local:A/1.txt
scp remote:A/2.txt local:A/2.txt
scp remote:B/1.txt local:B/1.txt
scp remote:C/1.txt local:C/1.txt
What is the easiest way to do that?
Copy multiple files from remote to local:
$ scp your_username#remote.edu:/some/remote/directory/\{a,b,c\} ./
Copy multiple files from local to remote:
$ scp foo.txt bar.txt your_username#remotehost.edu:~
$ scp {foo,bar}.txt your_username#remotehost.edu:~
$ scp *.txt your_username#remotehost.edu:~
Copy multiple files from remote to remote:
$ scp your_username#remote1.edu:/some/remote/directory/foobar.txt \
your_username#remote2.edu:/some/remote/directory/
Source: http://www.hypexr.org/linux_scp_help.php
From local to server:
scp file1.txt file2.sh username#ip.of.server.copyto:~/pathtoupload
From server to local (up to OpenSSH v9.0):
scp -T username#ip.of.server.copyfrom:"file1.txt file2.txt" "~/yourpathtocopy"
From server to local (OpenSSH v9.0+):
scp -OT username#ip.of.server.copyfrom:"file1.txt file2.txt" "~/yourpathtocopy"
From man 1 scp:
-O Use the legacy SCP protocol for file transfers instead of the SFTP protocol. Forcing the use of the
SCP protocol may be necessary for servers that do not implement SFTP, for backwards-compatibility for
particular filename wildcard patterns and for expanding paths with a ‘~’ prefix for older SFTP
servers.
HISTORY
Since OpenSSH 9.0, scp has used the SFTP protocol for transfers by default.
You can copy whole directories with using -r switch so if you can isolate your files into own directory, you can copy everything at once.
scp -r ./dir-with-files user#remote-server:upload-path
scp -r user#remote-server:path-to-dir-with-files download-path
so for instance
scp -r root#192.168.1.100:/var/log ~/backup-logs
Or if there is just few of them, you can use:
scp 1.txt 2.txt 3.log user#remote-server:upload-path
As Jiri mentioned, you can use scp -r user#host:/some/remote/path /some/local/path to copy files recursively. This assumes that there's a single directory containing all of the files you want to transfer (and nothing else).
However, SFTP provides an alternative if you want to transfer files from multiple different directories, and the destinations are not identical:
sftp user#host << EOF
get /some/remote/path1/file1 /some/local/path1/file1
get /some/remote/path2/file2 /some/local/path2/file2
get /some/remote/path3/file3 /some/local/path3/file3
EOF
This uses the "here doc" syntax to define a sequence of SFTP input commands. As an alternative, you could put the SFTP commands into a text file and execute sftp user#host -b batchFile.txt
The answers with {file1,file2,file3} works only with bash (on remote or locally)
The real way is :
scp user#remote:'/path1/file1 /path2/file2 /path3/file3' /localPath
After playing with scp for a while I have found the most robust solution:
(Beware of the single and double quotation marks)
Local to remote:
scp -r "FILE1" "FILE2" HOST:'"DIR"'
Remote to local:
scp -r HOST:'"FILE1" "FILE2"' "DIR"
Notice that whatever after "HOST:" will be sent to the remote and parsed there. So we must make sure they are not processed by the local shell. That is why single quotation marks come in. The double quotation marks are used to handle spaces in the file names.
If files are all in the same directory, we can use * to match them all, such as
scp -r "DIR_IN"/*.txt HOST:'"DIR"'
scp -r HOST:'"DIR_IN"/*.txt' "DIR"
Compared to using the "{}" syntax which is supported only by some shells, this one is universal
The simplest way is
local$ scp remote:{A/1,A/2,B/3,C/4}.txt ./
So {.. } list can include directories (A,B and C here are directories; "1.txt" and "2.txt" are file names in those directories).
Although it would copy all these four files into one local directory - not sure if that's what you wanted.
In the above case you will end up remote files A/1.txt, A/2.txt, B/3.txt and C/4.txt copied over to a single local directory, with file names ./1.txt, ./2.txt, ./3.txt and ./4.txt
Problem: Copying multiple directories from remote server to local machine using a single SCP command and retaining each directory as it is in the remote server.
Solution: SCP can do this easily. This solves the annoying problem of entering password multiple times when using SCP with multiple folders. Consequently, this also saves a lot of time!
e.g.
# copies folders t1, t2, t3 from `test` to your local working directory
# note that there shouldn't be any space in between the folder names;
# we also escape the braces.
# please note the dot at the end of the SCP command
~$ cd ~/working/directory
~$ scp -r username#contact.server.de:/work/datasets/images/test/\{t1,t2,t3\} .
PS: Motivated by this great answer: scp or sftp copy multiple files with single command
Based on the comments, this also works fine in Git Bash on Windows
You can do this way:
scp hostname#serverNameOrServerIp:/path/to/files/\\{file1,file2,file3\\}.fileExtension ./
This will download all the listed filenames to whatever local directory you're on.
Make sure not to put spaces between each filename only use a comma ,.
Copy multiple directories:
scp -r dir1 dir2 dir3 admin#127.0.0.1:~/
Is more simple without using scp:
tar cf - file1 ... file_n | ssh user#server 'tar xf -'
This also let you do some things like compress the stream (-C) or (since OpenSSH v7.3) -J to jump any times through one (or more) proxy servers.
Avoid using passwords by coping your public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (on server) with ssh-copy-id (on client).
Posted also here (with more details) and here.
scp remote:"[A-C]/[12].txt" local:
NOTE: I apologize in advance for answering only a portion of the above question. However, I found these commands to be useful for my current unix needs.
Uploading specific files from a local machine to a remote machine:
~/Desktop/dump_files$ scp file1.txt file2.txt lab1.cpp etc.ext your-user-id#remotemachine.edu:Folder1/DestinationFolderForFiles/
Uploading an entire directory from a local machine to a remote machine:
~$ scp -r Desktop/dump_files your-user-id#remotemachine.edu:Folder1/DestinationFolderForFiles/
Downloading an entire directory from a remote machine to a local machine:
~/Desktop$ scp -r your-user-id#remote.host.edu:Public/web/ Desktop/
In my case, I am restricted to only using the sftp command.
So, I had to use a batchfile with sftp. I created a script such as the following. This assumes you are working in the /tmp directory, and you want to put the files in the destdir_on_remote_system on the remote system. This also only works with a noninteractive login. You need to set up public/private keys so you can login without entering a password. Change as needed.
#!/bin/bash
cd /tmp
# start script with list of files to transfer
ls -1 fileset1* > batchfile1
ls -1 fileset2* >> batchfile1
sed -i -e 's/^/put /' batchfile1
echo "cd destdir_on_remote_system" > batchfile
cat batchfile1 >> batchfile
rm batchfile1
sftp -b batchfile user#host
In the specific case where all the files have the same extension but with different suffix (say number of log file) you use the following:
scp user_name#ip.of.remote.machine:/some/log/folder/some_log_file.* ./
This will copy all files named some_log_file from the given folder within the remote, i.e.- some_log_file.1 , some_log_file.2, some_log_file.3 ....
In my case there were too many files with non related names.
I ended up using,
$ for i in $(ssh remote 'ls ~/dir'); do scp remote:~/dir/$i ./$i; done
1.txt 100% 322KB 1.2MB/s 00:00
2.txt 100% 33KB 460.7KB/s 00:00
3.txt 100% 61KB 572.1KB/s 00:00
$
scp uses ssh for data transfer with the same authentication and provides the same security as ssh.
A best practise here is to implement "SSH KEYS AND PUBLIC KEY AUTHENTICATION". With this, you can write your scripts without worring about authentication. Simple as that.
See WHAT IS SSH-KEYGEN
serverHomeDir='/home/somepath/ftp/'
backupDirAbsolutePath=${serverHomeDir}'_sqldump_'
backupDbName1='2021-08-27-03-56-somesite-latin2.sql'
backupDbName2='2021-08-27-03-56-somesite-latin1.sql'
backupDbName3='2021-08-27-03-56-somesite-utf8.sql'
backupDbName4='2021-08-27-03-56-somesite-utf8mb4.sql'
scp -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user#server.domain.com:${backupDirAbsolutePath}/"{$backupDbName1,$backupDbName2,$backupDbName3,$backupDbName4}" .
. - at the end will download the files to current dir
-i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub - assuming that you established ssh to your server with .pub key
scp -r root#ip-address:/root/dir/ C:\Users\your-name\Downloads\
the -r will let you download all the files inside the dir directory of your remote server
I would like to rsync from local computer to server. On a directory that does not exist, and I want rsync to create that directory on the server first.
How can I do that?
If you have more than the last leaf directory to be created, you can either run a separate ssh ... mkdir -p first, or use the --rsync-path trick as explained here :
rsync -a --rsync-path="mkdir -p /tmp/x/y/z/ && rsync" $source user#remote:/tmp/x/y/z/
Or use the --relative option as suggested by Tony. In that case, you only specify the root of the destination, which must exist, and not the directory structure of the source, which will be created:
rsync -a --relative /new/x/y/z/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
This way, you will end up with /pre_existing/dir/new/x/y/z/
And if you want to have "y/z/" created, but not inside "new/x/", you can add ./ where you want --relativeto begin:
rsync -a --relative /new/x/./y/z/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
would create /pre_existing/dir/y/z/.
From the rsync manual page (man rsync):
--mkpath create the destination's path component
--mkpath was added in rsync 3.2.3 (6 Aug 2020).
Assuming you are using ssh to connect rsync, what about to send a ssh command before:
ssh user#server mkdir -p existingdir/newdir
if it already exists, nothing happens
The -R, --relative option will do this.
For example: if you want to backup /var/named/chroot and create the same directory structure on the remote server then -R will do just that.
this worked for me:
rsync /dev/null node:existing-dir/new-dir/
I do get this message :
skipping non-regular file "null"
but I don't have to worry about having an empty directory hanging around.
I don't think you can do it with one rsync command, but you can 'pre-create' the extra directory first like this:
rsync --recursive emptydir/ destination/newdir
where 'emptydir' is a local empty directory (which you might have to create as a temporary directory first).
It's a bit of a hack, but it works for me.
cheers
Chris
This answer uses bits of other answers, but hopefully it'll be a bit clearer as to the circumstances. You never specified what you were rsyncing - a single directory entry or multiple files.
So let's assume you are moving a source directory entry across, and not just moving the files contained in it.
Let's say you have a directory locally called data/myappdata/ and you have a load of subdirectories underneath this.
You have data/ on your target machine but no data/myappdata/ - this is easy enough:
rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/ user#host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata
You can even use a different name for the remote directory:
rsync -rvv --recursive /path/to/data/myappdata user#host:/remote/path/to/data/newdirname
If you're just moving some files and not moving the directory entry that contains them then you would do:
rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/*.txt user#host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata/
and it will create the myappdata directory for you on the remote machine to place your files in. Again, the data/ directory must exist on the remote machine.
Incidentally, my use of -rvv flag is to get doubly verbose output so it is clear about what it does, as well as the necessary recursive behaviour.
Just to show you what I get when using rsync (3.0.9 on Ubuntu 12.04)
$ rsync -rvv *.txt user#remote.machine:/tmp/newdir/
opening connection using: ssh -l user remote.machine rsync --server -vvre.iLsf . /tmp/newdir/
user#remote.machine's password:
sending incremental file list
created directory /tmp/newdir
delta-transmission enabled
bar.txt
foo.txt
total: matches=0 hash_hits=0 false_alarms=0 data=0
Hope this clears this up a little bit.
eg:
from: /xxx/a/b/c/d/e/1.html
to: user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/b/c/d/e/1.html
rsync:
cd /xxx/a/ && rsync -auvR b/c/d/e/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
rsync source.pdf user1#192.168.56.100:~/not-created/target.pdf
If the target file is fully specified, the directory ~/not-created is not created.
rsync source.pdf user1#192.168.56.100:~/will-be-created/
But the target is specified with only a directory, the directory ~/will-be-created is created. / must be followed to let rsync know will-be-created is a directory.
use rsync twice~
1: tranfer a temp file, make sure remote relative directories has been created.
tempfile=/Users/temp/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/temp.txt
# Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/ is directory that wanted.
rsync -aq /Users/temp/ rsync://remote
2: then you can specify the remote directory for transfer files/directory
tempfile|dir=/Users/XX/data|/Users/XX/data/
rsync -avc /Users/XX/data rsync://remote/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2
# Tips: [SRC] with/without '/' is different
This creates the dir tree /usr/local/bin in the destination and then syncs all containing files and folders recursively:
rsync --archive --include="/usr" --include="/usr/local" --include="/usr/local/bin" --include="/usr/local/bin/**" --exclude="*" user#remote:/ /home/user
Compared to mkdir -p, the dir tree even has the same perms as the source.
If you are using a version or rsync that doesn't have 'mkpath', then --files-from can help. Suppose you need to create 'mysubdir' in the target directory
Create 'filelist.txt' to contain
mysubdir/dummy
mkdir -p source_dir/mysubdir/
touch source_dir/mysubdir/dummy
rsync --files-from='filelist.txt' source_dir target_dir
rsync will copy mysubdir/dummy to target_dir, creating mysubdir in the process. Tested with rsync 3.1.3 on Raspberry Pi OS (debian).