Ubuntu – SCP from remote to local does not work

scpssh

I can scp just fine from local to remove by doing:

scp trip3.csv pi@192.168.2.11:/home/pi/

But when I try to do remote to local it says no such file or directory:

scp pi@192.168.2.11:/home/pi/trip3.csv /Users/andrew/Desktop

When i try scp pi@192.168.2.11:/home/pi/image.jpg ~ it asks for my remote password and shows that the transfer went through, but i can't find the file on my local machine.

Any thoughts?

This is where I am now:

step 1 – ssh into remote host

step 2 – sudo scp pi@192.168.2.11:image.jpg ~
which gives this response: pi@192.168.2.11's password:

step 3 – i enter the correct password which gives this: image.jpg 100% 163KB 162.7KB/s 00:00

step 4 – on local machine i do cd ~ followed by ls | grep image.jpg which does not give any output just a new command line

Best Answer

You have a pretty fundamental mis-understanding of how scp works.

Assuming "local" is where you want the file to end up, and "remote" is where the file is now, do this:

scp user@remote:/path/to/file.name ~

~ can be replaced with where ever you want the file to go on local.

DO NOT ssh to remote first. When you ssh to remote then run that command you are effectively copy the file from remote to remote, which is not what you want.

Do what you are doing, but skip step 1. Run the scp from bash/terminal on your local machine, don't ssh to remote first.

(deleting my other answer as it is no longer relevant)

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – SCP with two different ports

You can use ~/.ssh/config to specify the ports to use for the hosts (and for setting many other nice things; check the man page man ssh_config):

# ~/.ssh/config

Host 67.12.21.133
  Port 6774

Host 67.129.242.40
  Port 6774

When doing this, you have to use the option -3 to scp, which copies the files through your local machine. Otherwise, scp issues the scp command via ssh on the first host, so it actually runs

 ssh -p 6774 denny@67.12.21.133 scp -rp /home/denny/testapp1.txt denny@67.129.242.40:

and then the ~/.ssh/config of the first remote host (67.12.21.133) is used instead of your local one.

When you have setup your ~/.ssh/config correctly, this should work:

scp -rp3 denny@67.12.21.133:/home/denny/testapp1.txt denny@67.129.242.40:

Of course, you can also copy the contents of the ~/.ssh/config file onto your first remote host, and then you can use scp without the -3 option, which will probably speeden up the transfer.

Or you can use the trick that scp uses and use such a command line:

ssh -p 6774 denny@67.12.21.133 scp -rp -P 6774 /home/denny/testapp1.txt denny@67.129.242.40:

(Note the different case of the port parameter for ssh and scp: ssh -p 6774 vs. scp -P 6774)

PS: I got this information from the OpenSSH bugzilla where I entered this as a bug: https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2020

SCP – Copy Files from Remote to Home Machine

You do not need to specify your local hostname to scp a file from your university computer. What you need to do is from your home computer open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and type the following command:

scp myusername@university_computer:/home/myusername/file.odt /local/destination/path/

where /local/destination/path is the local path on Felix where you wish to store the file.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – SCP with two different ports

SCP – Copy Files from Remote to Home Machine

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