Copying files with scp: connection timed out

linux scp hostname
Argentina picture Argentina · Oct 14, 2014 · Viewed 51.1k times · Source

I am running a script on a remote machine and I would like to copy the output file on my pc, using scp.

I am perfectly able to copy files from my pc to the remote one, but apparently I am not in doing the opposite:

I have tried with both my hostname and ip adress, with :

scp star_101out.txt alessandra@ip_adress:/home/alessandra/Dropbox/tesi\ alle/Python

and I get this error: 

                Connection timed out

                  lost connection

what should I do?

Answer

Kelly MacInnis picture Kelly MacInnis · Aug 10, 2017

After spending way too long on this, scp reports this error any time the syntax of the command line is wrong. If ssh works to the host that you are trying to reach, but scp returns this error, the scp command line is not understandable by scp.

Also note that the mistake may be an invisible character. This can happen if you try to paste a long file name using ^v for example, but the character is entered into the command line instead.

Retype your request and insure that you don't insert invisible characters.

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