Copying files from server to local computer using SSH

ssh scp
Vincent picture Vincent · May 31, 2015 · Viewed 209.7k times · Source

I am having trouble copying files from a remote server using SSH. Using PuTTY I log in to the server using SSH. Once I find the file I would like to copy over to my computer, I use the command:

scp [email protected]:/dir/of/file.txt \local\dir\

It looks like it was successful, but it only ends up creating a new folder labeled 'localdir' in the remote directory /dir/of/.

How can I copy the file to my local computer over SSH?

Answer

mainframer picture mainframer · May 31, 2015

It depends on what your local OS is.

If your local OS is Unix-like, then try:

scp username@remoteHost:/remote/dir/file.txt /local/dir/

If your local OS is Windows ,then you should use pscp.exe utility. For example, below command will download file.txt from remote to D: disk of local machine.

pscp.exe username@remoteHost:/remote/dir/file.txt d:\

It seems your Local OS is Unix, so try the former one.

For those who don't know what pscp.exe is and don't know where it is, you can always go to putty official website to download it. And then open a CMD prompt, go to the pscp.exe directory where you put it. Then execute the command as provided above

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