SSH - a way to transfer files without opening a separate SFTP session?

shell ftp ssh sftp openssh
avalys picture avalys · Jan 13, 2009 · Viewed 14k times · Source

Not really a programming question, but relevant to many programmers...

Let's say I have opened an SSH session to another computer.

remote:html avalys$ ls
welcome.msg index.html readme.txt
remote:html avalys$

Is there any command that I can type in my remote shell that will immediately transfer one of the files in the current directory (e.g. welcome.msg) to my local computer, i.e.

remote:html avalys$ stransfer welcome.msg
Fetching /home/avalys/html/welcome.msg to welcome.msg
/home/avalys/html/welcome.msg 100% 23KB 23.3KB/s 00:00
remote:html avalys$

The only way I know of to do this is to open a parallel SFTP session and CD to my current directory in the SSH session, which is a real PITA when administering a server remotely.

EDIT: I am aware of the possibility of using a reverse sftp/scp connection, but that involves more typing. It would be great if I could type just the name of some command (e.g. "stransfer"), and the file(s) I want transferred, and have it Just Work.

Answer

Joshua picture Joshua · Jan 13, 2009

You could set up such an inverted transfer connection w/

ssh -Rport:127.0.0.1:22 user@host

for scp back.

Use scp user@host:port to access it.

Related questions

List file names based on a filename pattern and file content?

How can I use Grep command to search file name based on a wild card "LMN2011*" listing all files with this as beginning? I want to add another check on those file content. If file content has some thing like …

Read More
downloading all the files in a directory with cURL

I am using cURL to try to download all files in a certain directory. here's what my list of files looks like: I have tried to do in bash script: iiumlabs.[].csv.pgp and iiumlabs* and I guess curl is …

Read More
Getting exit status code from 'ftp' command in linux shell

I need to retrive the exit status code from a command line program. No worries, I used $?. But for ftp, even if it doesn't connect, it opens the ftp shell, so I'm not able to understand that the connection haven't …

Read More