Transferring Files

It is often necessary to move files from one computer to another. The process for doing this depends on the type of systems involved. There are a number of graphical application available for this purpose. On a Mac, I have used CyberDuck. On Windows, winSCP and FileZilla are both free options. Regardless of the software type, the process is similar from application to application. The important thing is that whichever software you choose, you must have the option to transfer files using either scp (secure copy) or sftp (secure file transfer protocol).

Graphical Options

Upon opening any of these software packages, you will first need to connect to the remote computer. Often, there is a “Connect” button somewhere in the menu or perhaps toolbar with some options. In all cases, you will be asked to specify the Host (e.g. emich.edu or similar) that you want to connect to and your credentials on that computer. Depending on the application, you may have to specify the port (typically 22) as well and you may have to select which protocol you wish to use to connect (scp or sftp). With this information entered, you should be able to initialize a connection to the remote computer, and if successful, you will be presented with two sub-windows: one containing a snapshot of your local filesystem and one with a snapshot of the remote filesystem.

The main window for FileZilla. Not pretty, but it gets the job done.

At this point, transferring files is a simple as dragging and dropping a file from one computer to another. You should be able to navigate the remote file system by clicking through folders on the system like you would if it were local. You should be able to push files to the remote as well as pull files from remote to local.

Linux scp

While graphical options are available on Linux computers, there is also a command line option: scp.

The scp command is similar to cp: you are copying a file from one location to another. The difference is that since we are moving a file from machine to machine, we need to include information about the remote machine in the process. Usage is:

scp [username]@hostname:’path of file to transfer’ [username]@hostname:’path to transfer to’

The first argument contains information about the file that you want to transfer, and the second argument contains information about where you want to transfer to. The username is optional and only necessary if you username on the two machine differs. The hostname is only included for which ever system is remote. You should, in general, include the quote marks with the remote machine argument.

For example, if I wanted to send a file called “images.tar” to a computer called yipe, I would do:

% scp images.tar dpawlows@yipe.emich.edu:’∼/’

This will copy the file to my home directory on Yipe.

To get a file from yipe:

% scp dpawlows@yipe.emich.edu:’∼/scripts.tar’ .

will bring the file to my local machine and put it in my current working directory. If you want to transfer an entire directory, simply include the -r flag.

% scp -r ∼/Documents/ yipe.emich.edu:’∼/’

will transfer my Documents directory and all of its contents to yipe. Note again that I don’t actually need to include my username if it is the same on the remote system as it is on my local machine.