In SSH, how do I mv to my local system?

Question

I ssh-ed into my webhost's directory, and tar-ed the webapp to download. When I try to mv to ~/mydirectory/backups or /home/mydirectory/backups, it defines the "home" as my root on the webhost that I'm ssh'ed into.

How do I mv in ssh to a local drive while still being inside the webhost's system?

Answer 1

First things first: ssh is a way to remotely login to another computer. The shell (command line) you get after you ssh is (pretty much) the same as if you had opened a xterm in the remote machine. If offers no such way to move files.

However, the fact that the remote computer accepts ssh connections gives you some options to exchange files:

Use scp To copy from your local computer to the remote, type, in the local computer:

scp /tmp/file user@example.com:/home/name/dir

(where /tmp/file can be replaced with any local file and /home/name/dir with any remote directory)

To copy from the remote computer to the local one, type, in the local computer:

scp user@example.com:/home/name/dir/file /tmp

Use sshfs This is a little more advanced but much, much nicer (when the internet connection of both computers is good. If not, stick to scp)

You can "link" a directory from the remote computer to an (empty) directory of the local computer. Say you "link" the /some/remote/dir from the remote computer to /home/youruser/remotecomp in your computer. If there is a file /some/remote/dir/file in the remote computer, you can see it on /home/youruser/remotecomp/file. You can copy and mv as usual, and you can even alter remote files and dirs.

Note however, that when the connection ends, /home/youruser/remotecomp becomes an empty dir again, and you only keep in the local computer the files you copied to other directories

To achieve this:

1. install sshfs:

sudo apt-get install sshfs

2. create a empty dir

mkdir /home/youruser/remotecomp

3. "link" the two directories (the right term is mount)

sshfs user@server.com:/some/remote/dir /home/youruser/remotecomp

4. Enjoy

5. "unlink" the dirs

fusermount -u /home/youruser/remotecomp

If the local computer runs windows You can find versions of scp for windows. See, e.g, winscp

Rsync rsync is a utility to copy files that can:

• resume transfers
• redo a transfer, but only send the files that changed.

To copy a single file, you can use rsync -P -e ssh /tmp/file user@example.com:/home/name/dir

To keep a directory in sync, sending only the needed files, you can use rsync -avzh /home/yourname/dir_name user@example.com:/var/temp/

There are also many other options, including deleting files in the remote dir if they no longer exist in the local dir.

This option is a bit harder. For example, you can mess up with trailing slashes (note that, in the last command, dir_name had no trailing slash, but /var/temp/ had). So it is useful, but requires a bit of testing and/or man rsync

As always, commands are run in the local computer, not the remote one

Answer 2

You can either use scp or rsync. In your local system:

scp remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/dir/file /local/dir/

But, since you mentioned backup, I assume that it would be incremental and you'll need to do it every now and then. So, rsync is a better choice for incremental backup. On your local shell:

rsync -avz -e ssh remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/dir /local/dir/

see rsync(1)and scp(1) man pages for options.

Answer 3

You could use scp secure copy.

From you local shell:

scp -C username@webhost:/path/of-the/tar.archive /home/mydirectory/backups/

This example will copy via ssh from /path/of-the/tar.archive of your webhost to /home/mydirectory/backups/

Extra options:

-C: Enables compression

Answer 4

I had the same problem. Here's the easy solution:-

1. Open nautilus (the file explorer)
2. Click on + Other Locations at bottom of left panel.
3. At the bottom there's a strip Connect to server. Write the ssh address in the input box such as ssh://111.222.333.444/.
4. Enter your user name and password in the dialogue box that will open.
5. Upon successful authentication you will be at home of remote location. Feel free to move file here and there.

Answer 5

The other answers recommend rsync or scp, both of which require you to know the location of the file you want to copy on the remote machine.

If you instead want to be able to poke around on the remote machine, like you can with ssh, you want to run sftp. Logging into the server is very similar to ssh, but once you get in, type help to get the list of commands - it lets you move yourself around on both the local and remote machines, and transfer files back and forth easily.

Answer 6

It's strange to that it's impossible from inside ssh. In a regular terminal, one could send/receive files using zmodem commands.

This helped to google up zssh: http://zssh.sourceforge.net/. One will have to run it as a wrapper to original ssh.

Answer 7

I realise this is old, but still relevant.

A good solution is to use fish:// via dolphin (from KDE's Plasma), put the ssh server details like this in the file-location box (ie address bar) of dolphin file manager -- you might have to change the default settings to reveal the location bar:

fish://username@example.com:2200

where username is your username on the remote computer, example.com is the domain of the computer (or IP address, like 202.123.4.2) and after the colon is the port number (default is 22, but the remote server may be set with a different port number; and should be).

You'll get asked for the password (unless you've set up an SSH key; which is a good idea) and when accepted you'll have a tab in dolphin that you can use like any other tab. Moving files from one dolphin window or tab is done by drag-dropping the files as you would if they were all local. IME this is a really easy way to do things.

I also have used krusader for the same sort of thing, except it has told to help you synchronise file changes between different folders (locally or remotely).

This blog post has images and some extra info on using fish.