scp: command not found

This tool is used to copy data to or from a remote host over SSH. Because it uses SSH, data you send to an off-site backup will be encrypted in transit, protecting its confidentiality. Like SSH, scp uses TCP port 22 by default. The following is an example of copying a file to a remote host:

# scp file.txt user@host:/home/dir

Given that scp defaults to ssh, we need to make sure that we have the password (or even better, key-based authentication) in place for it to work. Let’s assume we have a remote machine with the IPv4 address 63.32.106.149, and we want to copy a file there from our local machine:

$ scp file.txt remote_host:/tmp/

Here,

• Source is the file file.txt in the current directory.
• Destination is the /tmp directory on machine remote_host

If you encounter the below error while running the scp command:

scp: command not found

you may try installing the below package as per your choice of distribution:

scp Command Examples in Linux

1. Copy a local file to a remote host:

# scp path/to/local_file remote_host:path/to/remote_file

2. Use a specific port when connecting to the remote host:

# scp -P port path/to/local_file remote_host:path/to/remote_file

3. Copy a file from a remote host to a local directory:

# scp remote_host:path/to/remote_file path/to/local_directory

4. Recursively copy the contents of a directory from a remote host to a local directory:

# scp -r remote_host:path/to/remote_directory path/to/local_directory

5. Copy a file between two remote hosts transferring through the local host:

# scp -3 host1:path/to/remote_file host2:path/to/remote_directory

6. Use a specific username when connecting to the remote host:

# scp path/to/local_file remote_username@remote_host:path/to/remote_directory

7. Use a specific ssh private key for authentication with the remote host:

# scp -i ~/.ssh/private_key local_file remote_host:/path/remote_file