Command Syntax

SCP is short for secure copy protocol and is used to copy files and directories between multiple Linux machines over a network. The data transferred using SCP is encrypted to protect your data against nefarious agents.

Warning The scp command will not prompt when overwriting files, so be wary if you do not want certain files overwritten while you are copying.

Below is a very fundamental example of the scp command syntax. Specific options and other requirements may alter the syntax slightly but should remain roughly the same.

scp [OPTIONS] [SOURCE] [DESTINATION]


  • OPTIONS is where you specify any extra settings that you would like applied to the command. For example, using a different port or compressing data while transferring to the destination.

  • SOURCE is the source file or directory. You can choose a local directory or file. Alternatively, you can set it to a location on a remote machine. Specifying a remote system will look similar to user@10.0.0.3:/remote/directory.

  • DESTINATION is the destination for the source. You can set it to a location on a remote machine or your local machine. A location on a remote system should be in the following layout user@10.0.0.3:/remote/directory.

Command Options

Here are some few options you can use:

  • -P port allows you to specify the port to use when connecting to a remote host.
  • -p will preserve the modification times, access times, and modes from the original file.
  • -q disables the output from the command. SCP will show no progress bar or warnings.
  • -r will recursively copy directories and their files. SCP will follow symbolic links as it traverses the directory structure.
  • -C enables compression for transferring files.
  • -v will enable the verbose mode. It will cause SCP and SSH to print debugging messages throughout their progress.

Copy local file to Remote system

The command below will copy example.txt from the local host to /home/dev/ directory on the remote host using the user dev to connect to the remote host.

scp example.txt dev@10.10.0.2:/home/dev/

Rename a file at destination

If you want the file you are copying to have a new name at the destination just simply specify the name at the end of the remote directory.

scp example.txt dev@10.10.0.2:/home/dev/newName.txt

Copy remote file to local system

The following command will copy from remote system to your local system. The ./ is our working directory.

scp dev@10.10.0.2:/home/dev/remote.txt ./

Copy between two remote systems

The following command will copy the file RemoteSystem2.txtfrom host 10.10.0.3 to the directory /home/dev/ on host 10.10.0.2

scp user2@10.10.0.3:/home/user2/RemoteSystem2.txt dev@10.10.0.2:/home/dev/

Copy multiple files

If you want to copy multiple files at the same time just run:

scp example1.txt example2.txt example3.txt dev@10.10.0.3:/home/dev/

Copy Recursively

In the example below, we have a folder named scp which we will recursively copy all the files and directories to our destination. If you want to use the current working directory, you will need to use $(pwd) and not ./.

scp -r ./scp dev@10.10.0.3:/home/dev/

Change default scp port

To change the default SCP port from port 22 to something else, you will need to use the -P PORT option. You will find this useful as many system administrators change the default port for SSH.

Below is an example of how you use the -P option. Simply specify -P followed by the port you wish to use. In our case, we are using port 8080.

scp -P 8080 example.txt dev@10.10.0.3:/home/dev/

Compress file during transfer

Compressing the file is great for speeding up the transfer process. To use compression, simply use the -C option.

scp -C largefile.zip dev@10.10.0.3:/home/dev/