SCP(1) General Commands Manual SCP(1)
NAME
scp — OpenSSH secure file copy
SYNOPSIS
scp [-346ABCOpqRrsTv] [-c cipher] [-D sftp_server_path] [-F ssh_config]
[-i identity_file] [-J destination] [-l limit] [-o ssh_option]
[-P port] [-S program] [-X sftp_option] source ... target
DESCRIPTION
scp copies files between hosts on a network.
scp uses the SFTP protocol over a ssh(1) connection for data transfer,
and uses the same authentication and provides the same security as a
login session.
scp will ask for passwords or passphrases if they are needed for au-
thentication.
The source and target may be specified as a local pathname, a remote
host with optional path in the form [user@]host:[path], or a URI in the
form scp://[user@]host[:port][/path]. Local file names can be made ex-
plicit using absolute or relative pathnames to avoid scp treating file
names containing ‘:’ as host specifiers.
When copying between two remote hosts, if the URI format is used, a
port cannot be specified on the target if the -R option is used.
The options are as follows:
-3 Copies between two remote hosts are transferred through the lo-
cal host. Without this option the data is copied directly be-
tween the two remote hosts. Note that, when using the legacy
SCP protocol (via the -O flag), this option selects batch mode
for the second host as scp cannot ask for passwords or
passphrases for both hosts. This mode is the default.
-4 Forces scp to use IPv4 addresses only.
-6 Forces scp to use IPv6 addresses only.
-A Allows forwarding of ssh-agent(1) to the remote system. The
default is not to forward an authentication agent.
-B Selects batch mode (prevents asking for passwords or
passphrases).
-C Compression enable. Passes the -C flag to ssh(1) to enable
compression.
-c cipher
Selects the cipher to use for encrypting the data transfer.
This option is directly passed to ssh(1).
-D sftp_server_path
Connect directly to a local SFTP server program rather than a
remote one via ssh(1). This option may be useful in debugging
the client and server.
-F ssh_config
Specifies an alternative per-user configuration file for ssh.
This option is directly passed to ssh(1).
-i identity_file
Selects the file from which the identity (private key) for pub-
lic key authentication is read. This option is directly passed
to ssh(1).
-J destination
Connect to the target host by first making an scp connection to
the jump host described by destination and then establishing a
TCP forwarding to the ultimate destination from there. Multi-
ple jump hops may be specified separated by comma characters.
This is a shortcut to specify a ProxyJump configuration direc-
tive. This option is directly passed to ssh(1).
-l limit
Limits the used bandwidth, specified in Kbit/s.
-O Use the legacy SCP protocol for file transfers instead of the
SFTP protocol. Forcing the use of the SCP protocol may be nec-
essary for servers that do not implement SFTP, for backwards-
compatibility for particular filename wildcard patterns and for
expanding paths with a ‘~’ prefix for older SFTP servers.
-o ssh_option
Can be used to pass options to ssh in the format used in
ssh_config(5). This is useful for specifying options for which
there is no separate scp command-line flag. For full details
of the options listed below, and their possible values, see
ssh_config(5).
AddressFamily
BatchMode
BindAddress
BindInterface
CanonicalDomains
CanonicalizeFallbackLocal
CanonicalizeHostname
CanonicalizeMaxDots
CanonicalizePermittedCNAMEs
CASignatureAlgorithms
CertificateFile
CheckHostIP
Ciphers
Compression
ConnectionAttempts
ConnectTimeout
ControlMaster
ControlPath
ControlPersist
GlobalKnownHostsFile
GSSAPIAuthentication
GSSAPIDelegateCredentials
HashKnownHosts
Host
HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms
HostbasedAuthentication
HostKeyAlgorithms
HostKeyAlias
Hostname
IdentitiesOnly
IdentityAgent
IdentityFile
IPQoS
KbdInteractiveAuthentication
KbdInteractiveDevices
KexAlgorithms
KnownHostsCommand
LogLevel
MACs
NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost
NumberOfPasswordPrompts
PasswordAuthentication
PKCS11Provider
Port
PreferredAuthentications
ProxyCommand
ProxyJump
PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms
PubkeyAuthentication
RekeyLimit
RequiredRSASize
SendEnv
ServerAliveInterval
ServerAliveCountMax
SetEnv
StrictHostKeyChecking
TCPKeepAlive
UpdateHostKeys
User
UserKnownHostsFile
VerifyHostKeyDNS
-P port
Specifies the port to connect to on the remote host. Note that
this option is written with a capital ‘P’, because -p is al-
ready reserved for preserving the times and mode bits of the
file.
-p Preserves modification times, access times, and file mode bits
from the source file.
-q Quiet mode: disables the progress meter as well as warning and
diagnostic messages from ssh(1).
-R Copies between two remote hosts are performed by connecting to
the origin host and executing scp there. This requires that
scp running on the origin host can authenticate to the destina-
tion host without requiring a password.
-r Recursively copy entire directories. Note that scp follows
symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal.
-S program
Name of program to use for the encrypted connection. The pro-
gram must understand ssh(1) options.
-T Disable strict filename checking. By default when copying
files from a remote host to a local directory scp checks that
the received filenames match those requested on the command-
line to prevent the remote end from sending unexpected or un-
wanted 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.
-v Verbose mode. Causes scp and ssh(1) to print debugging mes-
sages about their progress. This is helpful in debugging con-
nection, authentication, and configuration problems.
-X sftp_option
Specify an option that controls aspects of SFTP protocol behav-
iour. The valid options are:
nrequests=value
Controls how many concurrent SFTP read or write re-
quests may be in progress at any point in time during a
download or upload. By default 64 requests may be ac-
tive concurrently.
buffer=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.
EXIT STATUS
The scp utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
sftp(1), ssh(1), ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1),
ssh_config(5), sftp-server(8), sshd(8)
HISTORY
scp is based on the rcp program in BSD source code from the Regents of
the University of California.
Since OpenSSH 9.0, scp has used the SFTP protocol for transfers by de-
fault.
AUTHORS
Timo Rinne <tri@iki.fi>
Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi>
CAVEATS
The legacy SCP protocol (selected by the -O flag) requires execution of
the remote user's shell to perform glob(3) pattern matching. This re-
quires careful quoting of any characters that have special meaning to
the remote shell, such as quote characters.
Debian December 16, 2022 SCP(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 06:21:58 CET 2025.