Ssh – Transferring Files SSH SCP Error Message: ‘Stdin: is not a tty’

osxscpssh

I am using a Macbook SSH terminal and generated RSA key pairs and uploaded remote id_rsa.pub with approved permissions. I can connect with remote Apache web server. I can create, open, move, modify and on preliminary inspection can manage files on the web server, no problem … and generate no error messages.

Surprisingly I can not scp a folder nor document from my desktop to the remote server. Nor can I scp a folder or document from the remote server to my desktop. Each time I receive the error message:

stdin: is not a tty

The scp command to or from the remote web server does not work with either absolute or relative file location references.

My standard syntax looks like this:

From local host: 

scp -rp ~/Desktop/foldername username@secureremoteserver.com:~/public_html

From remote host: 

scp -rp username@secureremoteserver.com:~/public_html/foldername ~/Desktop/

It appears to be an issue with the stdin: is not a tty error message.

What's going on?

If this error is preventing the file transfers, how do I resolve the stdin: is not a tty?

Best Answer

The reason for this is that one of the login scripts on the target server is using stty... to set up terminal characteristics. The command fails when it doesn't have a tty, ie when you connect with scp.

The solution is to protect the stty so that it runs only when an interactive session is present. There are a number of ways to do this; here are some examples for bash/sh type shells:

Ugly:

stty ... >/dev/null 2>&1

Works for me:

test -n "$PS1" && stty ...

Recommended elsewhere on SE:

# Check for a bash login shell
case $- in
  *i*) stty ... ;;
esac
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