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I am learning SSH as it seems there are no good SSH GUIs for Macs. I know how to make db dumps, cruise through the directories, etc, but the one last piece of the puzzle I need to learn is how to download folders/entire directories from the server and onto my local computer so I can then move them to another server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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6 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

I would look for an 'SFTP Client' and use that. Maybe FileZilla

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up vote 2 down vote

scp -r user@host:/path/to/folder/ local-copy-of-folder

If you have SSH keys set up, you can tab-complete remote files/folders.

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up vote 2 down vote

you can scp - which will allow you to securely copy between hosts.

to learn more you can do man scp

Its located in /usr/bin on linux. SCP or secure copy command copies files and directories from one computer to another in batch. (For interactive user interface you can use SFTP as "user545035" stated. It encrypts all communication between the two machines.

$ scp my file remote.example.com:newfile $ scp -r mydir remote.example.com: $ scp remote.example.com:myfile . $ scp -r remote.example.com:mydir .

TO specify an alternate username on the remote system, use the username@host syntax:

$ scp myfile solidariti@remote.example.com :

Useful options:

-p duplicate all file attributes (permissions, timestamps) when copying. -r Recursively copy a directory and its contents. -v Produce verbose output, useful for debugging.

SFTP (host|username@host) openssh-client located in the /usr/bin directory. The sftp program copies files interactively between two computers. (As opposed to scp, which copies files in batch.) The user interface is much like that of ftp.

$sftp remote.example.com password: ** sftp> cd MyFiles sftp> ls README ... sftp> get README Fetching /home/solidariti/Myfiles/README to README

If you username is different from your local one, use the username@host argument:

$ sftp solidariti@remote.example.com

Hope this gets you on your way.

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up vote 1 down vote

It's just...

scp -r username@remote:/path/to/folder /dest/local/path
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up vote 0 down vote

SSH is a command line only tool and natively supported by Mac and Linux computers. SFTP, a Protocol that allows File Transfer over an SSH tunnel, allows you to browse the destination computer with a degree of GUI (and security). You'll find most FTP clients (Filezilla) support this protocol.

For those who feel wikipedia is not trustworthy: IETF definition of SFTP (latest draft).

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SFTP is NOT FTP over SSH that's FTPs – Andrew White Dec 16 '10 at 16:35
Andrew you are mistaken have a look at the Wikipedia entries for SFTP en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol and FTPS en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTPS (scp is a combination of SSH and RCP, while SFTP is a combination of SSH and FTP - effectively the same solutions) – Rudu Dec 16 '10 at 17:07
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@Rudu: you are wrong, at the protocol level, FTP and SFTP are completely different. @Andrew: FTPS is not FTP over SSH but FTP over SSL/TLS. – salva Dec 16 '10 at 17:22
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@Rudu SFTP is NOT FTP over SSH. You can pray on Wikipedia, but either you are misreading it or one of the above. We develop components for SSH, SFTP, FTP/FTPS etc., so I know what it is ;) – Eugene Mayevski 'EldoS Corp Dec 16 '10 at 17:31
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@Rudu you are insisting in putting yourself as a person, that doesn't understand what he's talking about. "FTP over SSH" is namely FTP (RFC 959, text-based protocol) tunneled over SSH custom subsystem channel. SFTP is a binary protocol defined in the specification. FTP over SSH is a very rare method of transferring files as it's not supported by any major application. – Eugene Mayevski 'EldoS Corp Dec 16 '10 at 17:42
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up vote 0 down vote

Cyberduck was my favorite SSH/FTP/DAV GUI when I used a Mac. Looks like it's been updated to include Google Docs and S3 since then, too.

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