scp(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS | CAVEATS | COLOPHON

SCP(1)                 BSD General Commands Manual                SCP(1)

NAME         top

     scp — OpenSSH secure file copy

SYNOPSIS         top

     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] [-X sftp_option] source
         ... target

DESCRIPTION         top

     scp copies files between hosts on a network.

     scp uses the SFTP protocol over a ssh(1) connection 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 as scp 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
             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 a ProxyJump 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 separate scp 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
             that scp 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.

     -X sftp_option
             Specify an option that controls aspects of SFTP protocol
             behaviour.  The valid options are:

             nrequests=value
                     Controls how many concurrent SFTP read or write
                     requests may be in progress at any point in time
                     during a download or upload.  By default 64
                     requests may be active concurrently.

             buffer=value
                     Controls the maximum buffer size for a single SFTP
                     read/write operation used during download or
                     upload.  By default a 32KB buffer is used.

EXIT STATUS         top

     The scp utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO         top

     sftp(1), ssh(1), ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1),
     ssh_config(5), sftp-server(8), sshd(8)

HISTORY         top

     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         top

     Timo Rinne <tri@iki.fi>
     Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi>

CAVEATS         top

     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.

COLOPHON         top

     This page is part of the openssh (Portable OpenSSH) project.
     Information about the project can be found at
     http://www.openssh.com/portable.html.  If you have a bug report for
     this manual page, see ⟨http://www.openssh.com/report.html⟩.  This
     page was obtained from the tarball openssh-9.3p1.tar.gz fetched
     from ⟨http://ftp.eu.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/OpenSSH/portable/⟩ on
     2023-06-23.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
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     to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
     improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part
     of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

BSD                         December 16, 2022                        BSD