scp: Secure Copy

The scp command can be used to copy files between two hosts on the network. Unlike the older rcp utility, scp uses ssh for improved security and will prompt you if it needs a password or passphrase for authentication.

scp works much like cp, except that any file name may contain a hostname or username to indicate the file is to be copied to or from that host. For example, the command

scp smithj@example.edu:/home/smithj/show.ppt smith-show.ppt

would connect to the machine example.edu using the account smithj (prompting you for any necessary password), and copy the file /home/smithj/show.ppt on that machine to smith-show.ppt in the current directory on your workstation. If you omit the username but specify a machine name, scp will assume the username on the remote machine is the same as your local username at the IMA.

scp needs to be able to make an ssh connection to the remote machine in order to function.

WinSCP is a nice Windows version of scp. Source for WinSCP is http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/. We do have a version on our server at http://www.ima.umn.edu/winscp321setup.exe.