.\" .\" scp.1 .\" .\" Author: Tatu Ylonen .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1995 Tatu Ylonen , Espoo, Finland .\" All rights reserved .\" .\" Created: Sun May 7 00:14:37 1995 ylo .\" .\" $OpenBSD: scp.1,v 1.112 2022/12/16 07:13:22 djm Exp $ .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: December 16 2022 $ .Dt SCP 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm scp .Nd OpenSSH secure file copy .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm scp .Op Fl 346ABCOpqRrsTv .Op Fl c Ar cipher .Op Fl D Ar sftp_server_path .Op Fl F Ar ssh_config .Op Fl i Ar identity_file .Op Fl J Ar destination .Op Fl l Ar limit .Op Fl o Ar ssh_option .Op Fl P Ar port .Op Fl S Ar program .Op Fl X Ar sftp_option .Ar source ... target .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm copies files between hosts on a network. .Pp .Nm uses the SFTP protocol over a .Xr ssh 1 connection for data transfer, and uses the same authentication and provides the same security as a login session. .Pp .Nm will ask for passwords or passphrases if they are needed for authentication. .Pp The .Ar source and .Ar target may be specified as a local pathname, a remote host with optional path in the form .Sm off .Oo user @ Oc host : Op path , .Sm on or a URI in the form .Sm off .No scp:// Oo user @ Oc host Oo : port Oc Op / path . .Sm on Local file names can be made explicit using absolute or relative pathnames to avoid .Nm treating file names containing .Sq :\& as host specifiers. .Pp When copying between two remote hosts, if the URI format is used, a .Ar port cannot be specified on the .Ar target if the .Fl R option is used. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl 3 Copies between two remote hosts are transferred through the local host. Without this option the data is copied directly between the two remote hosts. Note that, when using the legacy SCP protocol (via the .Fl O flag), this option selects batch mode for the second host as .Nm cannot ask for passwords or passphrases for both hosts. This mode is the default. .It Fl 4 Forces .Nm to use IPv4 addresses only. .It Fl 6 Forces .Nm to use IPv6 addresses only. .It Fl A Allows forwarding of .Xr ssh-agent 1 to the remote system. The default is not to forward an authentication agent. .It Fl B Selects batch mode (prevents asking for passwords or passphrases). .It Fl C Compression enable. Passes the .Fl C flag to .Xr ssh 1 to enable compression. .It Fl c Ar cipher Selects the cipher to use for encrypting the data transfer. This option is directly passed to .Xr ssh 1 . .It Fl D Ar sftp_server_path Connect directly to a local SFTP server program rather than a remote one via .Xr ssh 1 . This option may be useful in debugging the client and server. .It Fl F Ar ssh_config Specifies an alternative per-user configuration file for .Nm ssh . This option is directly passed to .Xr ssh 1 . .It Fl i Ar identity_file Selects the file from which the identity (private key) for public key authentication is read. This option is directly passed to .Xr ssh 1 . .It Fl J Ar destination Connect to the target host by first making an .Nm connection to the jump host described by .Ar destination and then establishing a TCP forwarding to the ultimate destination from there. Multiple jump hops may be specified separated by comma characters. This is a shortcut to specify a .Cm ProxyJump configuration directive. This option is directly passed to .Xr ssh 1 . .It Fl l Ar limit Limits the used bandwidth, specified in Kbit/s. .It Fl O Use the legacy SCP protocol for file transfers instead of the SFTP protocol. Forcing the use of the SCP protocol may be necessary for servers that do not implement SFTP, for backwards-compatibility for particular filename wildcard patterns and for expanding paths with a .Sq ~ prefix for older SFTP servers. .It Fl o Ar ssh_option Can be used to pass options to .Nm ssh in the format used in .Xr ssh_config 5 . This is useful for specifying options for which there is no separate .Nm scp command-line flag. For full details of the options listed below, and their possible values, see .Xr ssh_config 5 . .Pp .Bl -tag -width Ds -offset indent -compact .It AddressFamily .It BatchMode .It BindAddress .It BindInterface .It CanonicalDomains .It CanonicalizeFallbackLocal .It CanonicalizeHostname .It CanonicalizeMaxDots .It CanonicalizePermittedCNAMEs .It CASignatureAlgorithms .It CertificateFile .It CheckHostIP .It Ciphers .It Compression .It ConnectionAttempts .It ConnectTimeout .It ControlMaster .It ControlPath .It ControlPersist .It GlobalKnownHostsFile .It GSSAPIAuthentication .It GSSAPIDelegateCredentials .It HashKnownHosts .It Host .It HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms .It HostbasedAuthentication .It HostKeyAlgorithms .It HostKeyAlias .It Hostname .It IdentitiesOnly .It IdentityAgent .It IdentityFile .It IPQoS .It KbdInteractiveAuthentication .It KbdInteractiveDevices .It KexAlgorithms .It KnownHostsCommand .It LogLevel .It MACs .It NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost .It NumberOfPasswordPrompts .It PasswordAuthentication .It PKCS11Provider .It Port .It PreferredAuthentications .It ProxyCommand .It ProxyJump .It PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms .It PubkeyAuthentication .It RekeyLimit .It RequiredRSASize .It SendEnv .It ServerAliveInterval .It ServerAliveCountMax .It SetEnv .It StrictHostKeyChecking .It TCPKeepAlive .It UpdateHostKeys .It User .It UserKnownHostsFile .It VerifyHostKeyDNS .El .It Fl P Ar port Specifies the port to connect to on the remote host. Note that this option is written with a capital .Sq P , because .Fl p is already reserved for preserving the times and mode bits of the file. .It Fl p Preserves modification times, access times, and file mode bits from the source file. .It Fl q Quiet mode: disables the progress meter as well as warning and diagnostic messages from .Xr ssh 1 . .It Fl R Copies between two remote hosts are performed by connecting to the origin host and executing .Nm there. This requires that .Nm running on the origin host can authenticate to the destination host without requiring a password. .It Fl r Recursively copy entire directories. Note that .Nm follows symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal. .It Fl S Ar program Name of .Ar program to use for the encrypted connection. The program must understand .Xr ssh 1 options. .It Fl T Disable strict filename checking. By default when copying files from a remote host to a local directory .Nm checks that the received filenames match those requested on the command-line to prevent the remote end from sending unexpected or unwanted files. Because of differences in how various operating systems and shells interpret filename wildcards, these checks may cause wanted files to be rejected. This option disables these checks at the expense of fully trusting that the server will not send unexpected filenames. .It Fl v Verbose mode. Causes .Nm and .Xr ssh 1 to print debugging messages about their progress. This is helpful in debugging connection, authentication, and configuration problems. .It Fl X Ar sftp_option Specify an option that controls aspects of SFTP protocol behaviour. The valid options are: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Cm nrequests Ns = Ns Ar value Controls how many concurrent SFTP read or write requests may be in progress at any point in time during a download or upload. By default 64 requests may be active concurrently. .It Cm buffer Ns = Ns Ar value Controls the maximum buffer size for a single SFTP read/write operation used during download or upload. By default a 32KB buffer is used. .El .El .Sh EXIT STATUS .Ex -std scp .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr sftp 1 , .Xr ssh 1 , .Xr ssh-add 1 , .Xr ssh-agent 1 , .Xr ssh-keygen 1 , .Xr ssh_config 5 , .Xr sftp-server 8 , .Xr sshd 8 .Sh HISTORY .Nm is based on the rcp program in .Bx source code from the Regents of the University of California. .Pp Since OpenSSH 9.0, .Nm has used the SFTP protocol for transfers by default. .Sh AUTHORS .An Timo Rinne Aq Mt tri@iki.fi .An Tatu Ylonen Aq Mt ylo@cs.hut.fi .Sh CAVEATS The legacy SCP protocol (selected by the .Fl O flag) requires execution of the remote user's shell to perform .Xr glob 3 pattern matching. This requires careful quoting of any characters that have special meaning to the remote shell, such as quote characters.