Comments on: Just need a folder of my own, that's all!

Question: Just need a folder of my own, that's all!

dance — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:04:10 -0800

Would anyone care to comment on the most practical way, given access to a command line Fedora box, I can obtain a copy of a folder and its contents?

The box is connected to the net but I don't know enough Unix to, for example, get a tar of the folder and have the machine email me a copy. Although thinking about it, the folder is probably just a little too big for that. I have SSH and physical access but FTP isn't working, which is the whole problem in a nutshell, really. If anyone is interested in 10 minutes' brainstorming feel free to mefi mail me!

By: gregjones

gregjones — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:11:56 -0800

if you have SSH, then you should have at least one of SCP or SFTP. If you're downloading to a windows machine, then WinSCP (also, confusingly, does SFTP) is really simple to use - you can download it as a standalone executable, so don't even need an install.

If you're downloading to a linux machine, then:
scp username@server.com:/path/to/file .

will download the file.

If you want to tar up the folder-contents, rather than downloading directly then:
tar -zcf filename.tar.gz /path/to/folder

will create a compressed archive for you (it will create the tar in whichever directory you run the command from).

By: moift

moift — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:14:15 -0800

Add -r to scp if you're targeting a folder.

From the copied-to system:
scp -r user@host:/path/to/file /local/destination

or from the copied-from system:
scp -r /path/to/file user@local_ip:/local/destination

By: ghost of a past number

ghost of a past number — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:28:11 -0800

If you can ssh in, you can then (s)ftp out to some friendlier place you can upload your file to.

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:45:24 -0800

If you really want an email, this might work:

ssh user@host -C "tar -c /path/to/directory -f /path/to/tarred-directory && metasend -f /path/to/tarred-directory -t recipient@address.com -s File -m application/x-tar -b && rm /path/to/tarred-directory"

By: beerbajay

beerbajay — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:57:51 -0800

If you are transferring to another *nix machine, scp from the command line is the easiest. If you need to transfer to windows, and your windows machine is nearby, consider using winscp and initiating the transfer from the windows box.

By: katrielalex

katrielalex — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:34:08 -0800

If you have physical access, plug in a USB drive and copy the folder? Easy if it automagically mounts it, otherwise you have to rootle around in /dev to find it.

By: dance

dance — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:47:32 -0800

Thanks a lot!! WinSCP did the job where so many other clients failed.