Cheatsheet Pages / SSH Cheatsheet
How to copy files with scp — both directions, custom ports, whole directories
A tarball goes up, a log file comes down — or a whole directory tree needs to move.
Every flag and config keyword was checked against the OpenSSH 9.6 man pages, and the config examples were parsed for real with ssh -G.
scp ./app.tar.gz deploy@example.com:/tmp/ # upload
scp deploy@example.com:/var/log/app.log ./ # download
scp -P 2222 -r ./site/ deploy@example.com:/var/www/
# ⚠️ scp's port flag is CAPITAL -P; ssh uses lowercase -p.
# This mix-up is the #1 reason "scp works but ssh doesn't" (and vice versa).Good to know
scp's port flag is CAPITAL -P; ssh uses lowercase -p. This mix-up is the #1 reason 'scp works but ssh doesn't' (and vice versa).
