Transfer files one machine to another 1

These days I transfer files one machine to another frequently. There are few ways to do that.

1. scp (ssh)

2. using apache server

3. sshfs (by mounting remote directory)

4. the most easy two ways (this can be used even you don't know the ip address)

In this post I covered first two and will cover the next two in the 2nd part.

SCP (SSH)

To do this you need to install ssh-client in your machine and ssh-server in the other machine.

If you use Ubuntu in your machine you can install this by using sudo apt-get install openssh-client or openssh-server or you can download it and install from here.

If you have install ssh-client and server in your both machines then you can copy files from each another. To do this you can use the following command.

copy a file from remote machine to your machine

=>scp user@remote.host:file-path path-to-save

eg: copy a remote file named remotefile.txt which located in Desktop of the remote machine to your Desktop

scp eranda@10.0.0.4:Desktop/remotefile.txt ./Desktop

copy a file from your machine to remote machine

=>scp  file-path user@remote.host:path-to-save

eg:copy a file named remotefile.txt which located in Desktop of your machine to the Desktop of a remote machine

scp ./Desktop/myfile.txt  eranda@10.0.0.4:/home/eranda/Desktop

Using apache server

For this you have to have apache server install in your machine. If you do not have you can install using the command sudo apt-get install apache2 or you can download and install the apache server from here.

After installing apache2 your server should be up and running.

You can see that by going to the URL http://localhost/

You can see this kind of message in it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It works!

This is the default web page for this server.

The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you see a Server Not Found 404 message, then you should start the apache2 server. You can do that by as follows

change directory to /usr/local/apache2

and execute the following commands

./clean.sh

./start.sh

Now lets start the file transferring.

First make directory in the location /var/

Put the file you want to copy to remote machine in that folder

For example I created a directory eranda in /var/ and put two of my files in that.

Now go to the remote machine and open a browser

Go to the URL http://your_machine_/your_folder_name (eg: http://10.0.0.4/eranda/)

You can see the files you put in the folder in your machine as follows

Now what you have to do is double click on the file you need and it will start downloading.

Special thank goes to Damitha Kumarage, Tech lead at WSO2 Inc.