Copy a single local file to a remote server over SSH with scp
domain: OpenSSH scp · 5 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Confirm SSH access to the server first (scp reuses the exact same authentication as ssh: SSH key or password) with: ssh user@host 'echo ok'
Basic push: scp /local/path/file.txt user@host:/remote/path/ (the path after the colon is on the server)
If the remote path is an existing directory the file is placed inside it; otherwise the name is used literally
Use a specific key: scp -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 /local/path/file.txt user@host:/remote/path/
Verify the transfer: ssh user@host 'ls -la /remote/path/file.txt'
Known gotchas
Since OpenSSH 9.0, scp defaults to the SFTP protocol over SSH rather than the legacy SCP protocol, so the remote sshd must have an SFTP subsystem enabled (it is standard in modern sshd)
The colon separates host from path; a local filename containing ':' must be quoted or disambiguated
-P (capital) is the remote port; -p (lowercase) preserves times/modes — the case difference bites frequently
Exit status 0 = success, non-zero = error; use -v for verbose auth/config diagnostics
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