How to copy files across computers using SSH and MAC OS X Terminal

macos unix file terminal copying
alvincrespo picture alvincrespo · Sep 14, 2010 · Viewed 356.5k times · Source

I'm trying to copy my .profile, .rvm and .ssh folders/files to a new computer and keep getting a "not a regular file" response. I know how to use the cp and ssh commands but I'm not sure how to use them in order to transfer files from one computer to another.

Any help would be great, thanks!

Answer

Ether picture Ether · Sep 14, 2010

You can do this with the scp command, which uses the ssh protocol to copy files across machines. It extends the syntax of cp to allow references to other systems:

scp username1@hostname1:/path/to/file username2@hostname2:/path/to/other/file

Copy something from this machine to some other machine:

scp /path/to/local/file username@hostname:/path/to/remote/file

Copy something from another machine to this machine:

scp username@hostname:/path/to/remote/file /path/to/local/file

Copy with a port number specified:

scp -P 1234 username@hostname:/path/to/remote/file /path/to/local/file

Related questions

writing command line output to file

I am writing a script to clean up my desktop, moving files based on file type. The first step, it would seem, is to ls -1 /Users/user/Desktop (I'm on Mac OSX). So, using Python, how would I run …

Read More
How to run a shell script on a Unix console or Mac terminal?

I know it, forget it and relearn it again. Time to write it down.

Read More
OS X: equivalent of Linux's wget

How can I do an HTTP GET from a Un*x shell script on a stock OS X system? (installing third-party software is not an option, for this has to run on a lot of different systems which I don't …

Read More