Mac Terminal SSH file transfer?

12

6

Is there a way to transfer files directly from a Mac to another using only Terminal? Perhaps using SSH?

JShoe

Posted 2011-05-19T20:10:40.833

Reputation: 1 142

Answers

24

Yes, you can use scp , which basically cp over ssh. It can work either way also, so:

scp ~/Document/Localfile remoteuser@remotemachine:~/Desktop

or

scp remoteuser@remotemachine:~/Destkop/remotefile ~/Desktop

The first command would copy a file to the remote machine, the second would copy a file from the remote to the local. The syntax is <user>@<machine or ip>:<file> you can do a man scp for more switches and options

Ryan Gibbons

Posted 2011-05-19T20:10:40.833

Reputation: 706

No problem, please remember Gordon Davisson info below wrt Mac Metadata and the -E option – Ryan Gibbons – 2011-05-19T20:45:08.607

4

The scp command on Linux is how you do file transfers using SSH

CenterOrbit

Posted 2011-05-19T20:10:40.833

Reputation: 1 759

5scp works great on Macs with one caveat: if you want it to copy Mac-specific file metadata (resource forks, extended attributes, etc), be sure to use its -E option. – Gordon Davisson – 2011-05-19T20:17:09.377

1

scp is the command you want. You need to have SSH logins enabled on the destination computer, and know the username and password for the destination computer.

scp file.txt user@destination-computer:/Users/user/Documents/file.txt

William Jackson

Posted 2011-05-19T20:10:40.833

Reputation: 7 646

1

Here is quick way of copying files using uuencode/uudecode and clipboard.

In terminal, while having connection opened on remote machine:

press CMD + K to clear the window
clear; uuencode filename < file

Then select and copy all text from the terminal window (CMD + A, CMD + C). Now open new terminal window, on your local system and do:

uudecode

Now press CMD + V now to paste uuencoded content of your file. Press CTRL + D after that to finish input to uudecode program. uudecode will create your file locally, under the name 'filename'.

Peter Štibraný

Posted 2011-05-19T20:10:40.833

Reputation: 1 281