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with scp I can get a file
scp remoteA:file .
and put a file
scp file remoteB:
but when I try
scp remoteA:file remoteB:
I get
ssh: Could not resolve hostname remoteB: Name or service not known
lost connection
why?
the remoteA and remoteB description is in ~/.ssh/config
likely not related to scp itself, but some sort of name resolution from one host to another. another thing to consider is authentication. it is best you have a passphrase-less key auth from A to B. in which host's .ssh/config you are defining these hosts? scp is not finding that definition. try the real fqdn of the host and it should work fine, if host definition is the problem. also, use -v to see if more details can be found for the error.
You need to specify a host which remoteA can reach because the copy is made from remoteA directly to remoteB.
To avoid this you can use the -3 option. man scp says what it does:
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 this option disables the progress meter.
ssh into remoteA and do a normal scp while enjoying that sweet path auto-completion. Anyway this answer saved my sanity, so thanks.
– JohnTheWalker
Sep 6 '19 at 9:22
For those who come here because scp accuses a local file of being a hostname which it can't resolve (another source of Name or service not known), such as:
> scp archive_2017-03-01-09:54:02.tar.gz backupserver:/var/backups/
ssh: Could not resolve hostname archive_2017-03-01-09:54:02.tar.gz: Name or service not known
Workaround:
> scp ./archive_2017-03-01-09:54:02.tar.gz backupserver:/var/backups/
scpto copy between two remote hosts works perfectly fine for me. Are you sure you haven't made a typo in your command (like you have made in your question title)? – aland Apr 30 '12 at 16:31