NAME
scp
—
OpenSSH secure file copy
SYNOPSIS
scp |
[-346ABCOpqRrsTv ] [-c
cipher] [-D
sftp_server_path] [-F
ssh_config] [-i
identity_file] [-J
destination] [-l
limit] [-o
ssh_option] [-P
port] [-S
program] source ...
target |
DESCRIPTION
scp
copies files between hosts on a
network.
It uses ssh(1) for data transfer, and uses the same authentication and provides the same security as a login session.
scp
will ask for passwords or passphrases
if they are needed for authentication.
The source and target
may be specified as a local pathname, a remote host with optional path in
the form [user@]host:[path], or a URI in the form
scp://[user@]host[:port][/path]. Local file names
can be made explicit using absolute or relative pathnames to avoid
scp
treating file names containing ‘:’
as host specifiers.
When copying between two remote hosts, if the URI format is used,
a port cannot be specified on the
target if the -R
option is
used.
The options are as follows:
-3
- Copies between two remote hosts are transferred through the local host.
Without this option the data is copied directly between the two remote
hosts. Note that, when using the legacy SCP protocol (via the
-O
flag), this option selects batch mode for the second host asscp
cannot ask for passwords or passphrases for both hosts. This mode is the default. -4
- Forces
scp
to use IPv4 addresses only. -6
- Forces
scp
to use IPv6 addresses only. -A
- Allows forwarding of ssh-agent(1) to the remote system. The default is not to forward an authentication agent.
-B
- Selects batch mode (prevents asking for passwords or passphrases).
-C
- Compression enable. Passes the
-C
flag to ssh(1) to enable compression. -c
cipher- Selects the cipher to use for encrypting the data transfer. This option is directly passed to ssh(1).
-D
sftp_server_path- When using the SFTP protocol support via
-M
, connect directly to a local SFTP server program rather than a remote one via ssh(1). This option may be useful in debugging the client and server. -F
ssh_config- Specifies an alternative per-user configuration file for
ssh
. This option is directly passed to ssh(1). -i
identity_file- Selects the file from which the identity (private key) for public key authentication is read. This option is directly passed to ssh(1).
-J
destination- Connect to the target host by first making an
scp
connection to the jump host described by destination and then establishing a TCP forwarding to the ultimate destination from there. Multiple jump hops may be specified separated by comma characters. This is a shortcut to specify aProxyJump
configuration directive. This option is directly passed to ssh(1). -l
limit- Limits the used bandwidth, specified in Kbit/s.
-O
- Use the legacy SCP protocol for file transfers instead of the SFTP protocol. Forcing the use of the SCP protocol may be necessary for servers that do not implement SFTP, for backwards-compatibility for particular filename wildcard patterns and for expanding paths with a ‘~’ prefix for older SFTP servers.
-o
ssh_option- Can be used to pass options to
ssh
in the format used in ssh_config(5). This is useful for specifying options for which there is no separatescp
command-line flag. For full details of the options listed below, and their possible values, see ssh_config(5).- AddressFamily
- BatchMode
- BindAddress
- BindInterface
- CanonicalDomains
- CanonicalizeFallbackLocal
- CanonicalizeHostname
- CanonicalizeMaxDots
- CanonicalizePermittedCNAMEs
- CASignatureAlgorithms
- CertificateFile
- CheckHostIP
- Ciphers
- Compression
- ConnectionAttempts
- ConnectTimeout
- ControlMaster
- ControlPath
- ControlPersist
- GlobalKnownHostsFile
- GSSAPIAuthentication
- GSSAPIDelegateCredentials
- HashKnownHosts
- Host
- HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms
- HostbasedAuthentication
- HostKeyAlgorithms
- HostKeyAlias
- Hostname
- IdentitiesOnly
- IdentityAgent
- IdentityFile
- IPQoS
- KbdInteractiveAuthentication
- KbdInteractiveDevices
- KexAlgorithms
- KnownHostsCommand
- LogLevel
- MACs
- NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost
- NumberOfPasswordPrompts
- PasswordAuthentication
- PKCS11Provider
- Port
- PreferredAuthentications
- ProxyCommand
- ProxyJump
- PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms
- PubkeyAuthentication
- RekeyLimit
- RequiredRSASize
- SendEnv
- ServerAliveInterval
- ServerAliveCountMax
- SetEnv
- StrictHostKeyChecking
- TCPKeepAlive
- UpdateHostKeys
- User
- UserKnownHostsFile
- VerifyHostKeyDNS
-P
port- Specifies the port to connect to on the remote host. Note that this option
is written with a capital ‘P’, because
-p
is already reserved for preserving the times and mode bits of the file. -p
- Preserves modification times, access times, and file mode bits from the source file.
-q
- Quiet mode: disables the progress meter as well as warning and diagnostic messages from ssh(1).
-R
- Copies between two remote hosts are performed by connecting to the origin
host and executing
scp
there. This requires thatscp
running on the origin host can authenticate to the destination host without requiring a password. -r
- Recursively copy entire directories. Note that
scp
follows symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal. -S
program- Name of program to use for the encrypted connection. The program must understand ssh(1) options.
-T
- Disable strict filename checking. By default when copying files from a
remote host to a local directory
scp
checks that the received filenames match those requested on the command-line to prevent the remote end from sending unexpected or unwanted files. Because of differences in how various operating systems and shells interpret filename wildcards, these checks may cause wanted files to be rejected. This option disables these checks at the expense of fully trusting that the server will not send unexpected filenames. -v
- Verbose mode. Causes
scp
and ssh(1) to print debugging messages about their progress. This is helpful in debugging connection, authentication, and configuration problems.
EXIT STATUS
The scp
utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
sftp(1), ssh(1), ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), ssh_config(5), sftp-server(8), sshd(8)
HISTORY
scp
is based on the rcp program in
BSD source code from the Regents of the University
of California.
Since OpenSSH 9.0, scp
has used the SFTP
protocol for transfers by default.
AUTHORS
Timo Rinne
<tri@iki.fi>
Tatu Ylonen
<ylo@cs.hut.fi>
CAVEATS
The legacy SCP protocol (selected by the
-O
flag) requires execution of the remote user's
shell to perform glob(3) pattern matching. This requires careful quoting of
any characters that have special meaning to the remote shell, such as quote
characters.