I'm SSHing into a remote server on the command line, and trying to copy a directory onto my local machine with the scp command. However, the remote server returns this "usage" message:
[Stewart:console/ebooks/discostat] jmm% scp -p ./styles/
usage: scp [-1246BCEpqrv] [-c cipher] [-F ssh_config] [-i identity_file]
[-l limit] [-o ssh_option] [-P port] [-S program]
[[user@]host1:]file1 [...] [[user@]host2:]file2
[Stewart:console/ebooks/discostat] jmm%
I'd like to be able to transfer files in both directions. From what I read, I thought the above command would work for downloading, and scp -p [localpath] [remotepath] for uploading?
Answer
You need to scp something somewhere. You have scp ./styles/, so you're saying secure copy ./styles/, but not where to copy it to.
Generally, if you want to download, it will go:
# download: remote -> local
scp user@remote_host:remote_file local_file
where local_file might actually be a directory to put the file you're copying in. To upload, it's the opposite:
# upload: local -> remote
scp local_file user@remote_host:remote_file
If you want to copy a whole directory, you will need -r. Think of scp as like cp, except you can specify a file with user@remote_host:file as well as just local files.
Edit: As noted in a comment, if the usernames on the local and remote hosts are the same, then the user can be omitted when specifying a remote file.