scp Command: Tutorial & Examples

Copy files to or from a remote host using the Secure Copy (SCP) protocol

The scp command is used to securely copy files and directories between two different systems over a network connection. It uses the SSH (Secure Shell) protocol for secure transfer of files, and is similar to the cp command but allows for remote file transfers.

The basic syntax for using the scp command is as follows:

scp [options] [source] [destination]

Here are a few examples of how the scp command can be used:

Copy a file named file.txt from the local system to a remote system:

scp file.txt user@remote-host:/path/to/destination

Copy a directory named mydir and its contents from the remote system to the local system:

scp -r user@remote-host:/path/to/mydir .

In the first example, the scp command is used to copy a file named file.txt from the local system to a remote system. The user's login name and remote host name or IP address are specified as part of the destination path, as well as the directory where the file should be copied. The second example is using the -r option to copy recursively the directory mydir and it's contents from the remote system to the local system.

scp uses the same authentication and security mechanisms as ssh, and it can be configured to use specific ssh key, and it's also possible to specify a different ssh port by providing it in the destination path.

It's worth noting that the scp command is a powerful tool for transferring files securely between systems and it's widely used in many scenarios such as deployment, backups, and data transfer between servers.

An alternative to scp is rsync which only transfers the differences in a file or directory, thus saving a lot of bandwidth on slow connections.