Copying files using scp

Copying files between different Linux, MacOSX or UNIX servers can be done with the scp command. Thus you can use scp to transport data between CSC and your local machine or between different file systems at CSC.

The basic syntax for copying data from a local machine to a remote server is:

scp /path/to/file username@server:/path/to/remote/destination

And correspondingly the syntax to copy files from a remote server to a local machine is:

scp username@server:/path/to/file /path/to/local/destination

For example, the command to copy a local file (data.txt) from the current directory to Puhti, to the user's (bob:s) home directory would be:

scp data.txt bob@puhti.csc.fi:~/

The special symbol ~ points to the users home directory.

To copy complete directories, you should use scp command with option -r. Use the csc-workspaces command on Puhti to show available disk areas.

scp -r /path/to/data_directory bob@puhti.csc.fi:/scratch/project_2001234/data_dir 

The above command will copy the directory (data_directory) with all its content to Puhti at /scratch/project_2001234/data_dir.

Copying the data from CSC server to your local machine is done in the same way:

scp bob@puhti.csc.fi:/scratch/project_2001234/data.txt .

The . symbol points to the current local directory on your local machine.

In the commands above, files and directories have been copied one at a time. However, scp can also copy several files at a time:

scp data1.txt data2.txt data3.txt bob@puhti.csc.fi:~/

You can also use wild cards when defining the files to be copied. For example, to copy all files with extension .txt from the current directory on your local machine to your home directory on Puhti, you could use the command:

scp *.txt bob@puhti.csc.fi:~/

By default the copied files are treated as new files, but if you add option -p to the scp command, then the copied file will inherit the date and access mode information from the original file.

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