You need to use gcloud compute command to copy files between a Google virtual machine instance and your local machine powered by OSX/Linux or Unix-like system.
Syntax
The basic syntax is as follows to copy file from your local system to remote Google VM:
gcloud compute copy-files local-file-name {instance-name-here}:/path/ --zone {zone-name-here} |
The basic syntax is as follows to copy file from remote Google VM to your local system
gcloud compute copy-files {instance-name-here}:/remote/path /local/dir/ --zone {zone-name-here} gcloud compute copy-files {instance-name-here}:/~filename /local/dir/ --zone {zone-name-here} |
Examples
To list your Google compute VM, enter:
$ gcloud compute instances list
Sample outputs:
To copy local /etc/hosts file to remote vm called instance-1 hosted in us-central1-b zone, enter:
$ gcloud compute copy-files /etc/hosts vivek@instance-1:~/ --zone us-central1-b
To copy local ~/webapp/ directory to remote vm called instance-1 hosted in us-central1-b zone, enter:
$ gcloud compute copy-files ~/webapp/ nginx@instance-1:/var/www/nginx/ --zone us-central1-b
To copy remote /foo/ directory from remote vm called instance-1 hosted in us-central1-b zone, enter:
$ gcloud compute copy-files USER@instance-1:/foo/ ~/backups/ --zone us-central1-b
To copy remote file ~/db.conf.py from remote vm called instance-1 hosted in us-central1-b zone, enter:
$ gcloud compute copy-files USER@instance-1:~/db.conf.py $HOME/data/ --zone us-central1-b
Options
You can pass the following options:
--dry-run : If provided, prints the command that would be run to standard out instead of executing it. --plain : Suppresses the automatic addition of ssh(1)/scp(1) flags. This flag is useful if you want to take care of authentication yourself or re-enable strict host checking. --ssh-key-file SSH_KEY_FILE : The path to the SSH key file. By default, this is ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine. --zone ZONE : The zone of the instance to copy files to/from. If omitted, you will be prompted to select a zone. |