Linux – can’t scp a named pipe

fifolinuxscp

I am trying to encrypt a file on-the-fly, redirecting the output to a named pipe [fifo]. I SSH into my server and run the command:

           $ mcrypt -k key < file > named_pipe

then from my laptop I try to scp it:

           $ scp me@server:~/dir/named_pipe

and it says

           scp: /users/home/me/dir/named_pipe: not a regular file

Is there any way to do this? Thanks

Best Answer

Stream from it instead.

ssh me@server cat ~/dir/named_pipe > file.out

Related Solutions

Can SSH into remote server but can’t SCP

Your scp does not say "permission denied" anywhere. It just says "Connection closed", which might mean that the server is missing a scp command, or failing to start it for some reason.

Try ssh [user]@[remoteserver.com] scp. If it says "usage: scp ...", then scp is okay. If it says "command not found", then...
If you have admin access on the remote server, check the logs there; maybe even start sshd -rdddp 222 in debug logging mode.

How to prevent terminating command to send EOF to named pipes

Run all your commands in a sub-shell (or in bash, within parenthesis), and redirect the subshell to the named pipe.

( 
     # some stuff
     echo "foo"
     # some other stuff
     echo "bar"
     # end of my commands
) > /home/foo/bar/named_pipe

And to answer the EOF question, EOF is written when the file handle closes. If you redirect from a program, you get EOF when that program (echo, in this case) terminates. By encapsulating multiple commands in parenthesis, you only get one EOF when the close parenthesis is reached.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Can SSH into remote server but can’t SCP

How to prevent terminating command to send EOF to named pipes

Related Question