How do I securely transfer files from one UNIX / Linux server to another UNIX server using Windows or Linux desktop clients without using ftp client?
You need to use secure sftp or scp client for Windows XP / Vista / 7. Under Linux or Apple Mac OS X desktop you can use regular OpenSSH scp / sftp client to transfer files.
Windows SSH Client
You can use free SFTP, FTP and SCP client for Windows called putty or winscp.
Fig.01: Winscp transfer files from one UNIX server to another (image credit Winscp website)
Linux / UNIX / OS X SSH scp Client Examples
Use the following command from the server to which you want the files to go. In this example, transfer all files (/var/www/html) from remote server called server1 to local directory called /backup:
scp -r user@server1:/var/www/html/ /backup
In the following example, transfer all files (/var/www/html) from remote server called server1 to another server called server2:
scp -r user@server1:/var/www/html/ user@server2:/var/www/html/
Say hello to rsync
I recommend using rsync command which will only push or download updated files. It can copy locally, to/from another host over any remote shell, or to/from a remote rsync daemon. In this example, copy files from remote server called server1 into /backup directory:
rsync -avz -e ssh user@server1:/var/www/html /backup
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Expecting more Quality posts from you .. not like this one for the sake of posting.
Thx greate tutorial……………………Keep it up.
:)
putty– SSH client tool which is the powerful one
winscp — ssh GUI tool , mostly useful for secured file transferring but not good for large file transfer.
sftp : secured ftp file transfer
vnc over ssh tunnel : secured Linux GUI administration
lftp : FTP synchronization tool, which is a great helpful to admins to keep the incremental file synchronization over FTP.
webdev+https : secured file sharing over the web, can be used as mapped network
location
Umm, I’m getting this error:
vps200:/tmp# scp -r root@vps204:/var/tmp/host-test root@vps243:/tmp/
Host key verification failed.
lost connection
???????
I got the same error too, i later modified to just
scp -r /var/tmp/host/ user@server:/var/tmp/host/whatever
It just asked me for the target server’s password and then copied.
How about tranferring or downloading file from remote linux server to Windows machine?
I used Winscp GUI tool but im still looking for a ways to do it by just running ascript.
So far this is what I have in Windows machine:
winscp> open
winscp> get /root/file.txt //to download file fom the linux server
winscp> put D:\file.txt /home/user1 //to upload file
I am still looking for a way to specify the destination directory in the “get” command
and how to rename the file in a desired format when I “put” the file in the linux server.
Any help will be appreciated.
..Israel
try to run command with -v attribute . it will give us some information to debug..
Is shell demading for any password for both of the server???
you can also try pscp.exe, which is a command line tool
d:\Distors\pscp.exe -r user@server1:/var/tmp/deb.iso .
:)
how can u securely transfer a file from one server to another in linux?
You can use scp command to copy ……..
scp -r user@server1:/var/www/html/ user@server2:/var/www/html/Filezilla FTP client
Hola Vivek Gite … a BIG THank You on this post and your sharing the command line scp -r user@server1:dir-path examples … this worked brilliantly and i just got done migrating 26+ gigs of domain files from server01 to new server02 via your command line method …
as fyi, i started at 10AM trying to do it via two open sessions of WinSCP but stopped after 12% of one of the 11 gig tar files on server01 ran and ran only to discover that WinSCP method was downloading the tar to my local machine (which was not NTFS drive thus would have crashed with 2 / 4 gig win fat32 limits) and then uploading it onto the new server02 which was useless …
so around noon i cancelled said silliness, opened WinSCP as root on server02, launched Putty from within WinSCP, and started command line per your examples … 8 hours later, it looks like all tar.gz data files from domains on server01 are nicely arrived and awaiting to be untar’d into new domain areas on server02 ;)
muchas gracias … cordially, chuck scott
ps – transfer included 2,898 files, 174 folders and 25.572 gigs of data … FTP did not work as the server02 did not have FTP configured for root user
how to make one pc as client pc to another as aserver pc
Hi,
I want to copy emails from old server to the new server, I tried to use scp command it prompt me for password but when I put the password for my server it refused and I lost connection. Which password should I use?
scp -P port -r user@server1:/var/www/html/ user@server2:/var/www/html/
my server 2 has also a different port so how could i defined port for server 2
Please describe detailed about sftp. what should i do after this. Let’s say I want to get files ie /tmp/gds1 from server1 to server2
I did : sftp username@server1 it prompts like
sftp >
what should i do from here to get file?
please advise , it’s urgent . Also is their any tutorial clases online for this.
Thank you
I am looking to automate the transfer of back up files from an FTP account on one Linux server to another Linux Server. I don’t have admin access to either of the servers. I have tried CrossFTP with little success.
Is it possible to script this to automate the transfer without requiring a Windows machine to act as the controller?
Many thanks.