I've searched all around and can't seem to find this... I'm trying to copy a private key to my local machine which is a Mac.

When I fire up terminal on my mac, I get Jamies-iMac:~ jamie$

So after I ssh into my Ubuntu server I tried

scp /path/to/myfile.txt jamie@Jamies-iMac:/path/to/myfile.txt

which gives me:

ssh: Could not resolve hostname Jamies-iMac: Name or service not known
lost connection

In place of jamie@Jamies-iMac:/path/to/myfile.txt I've tried some other variations but nothing seems to work. Thanks for your help.

5 Answers

@ovc had it right, but there is a syntax error, and my edit got rejected for some reason. You need to have a colon between the user and filepath on the ubuntu side, and on the mac side you need to have the /Users/username/ portion in the filepath. Like so:

scp username@192.168.1.111:/path/to/myfile.txt /Users/Jamie/local/path/to/myfile.txt

This assumes you have private key authentication set up.

3

You're doing it the wrong way around. Simply use the scp command on the Mac, like this: scp username@192.168.1.111:/path/to/myfile.txt /local/path/to/myfile.txt. You may also just use FileZilla which is a graphical client. Connect to your Ubuntu with a URL like sftp://192.168.1.111, of course you need to use the valid IP address.

4

Excellent answers above. Additionally, if you need to use a certificate for authentication, you can use the -i flag.

scp -i /path/to/cert username@192.168.1.111:/path/to/myfile.txt /Users/Jamie/local/path/to/myfile.txt

1

If the path you're using has spaces, you should use the path in quotes, such as

scp username@192.168.1.111:"/path to/myfile.txt" ./myfile.txt

Yet, that didnt work for me.

Allegedly you should use triple backslashes, such as

/Users/me/Application\\\ Data/file.txt

But it worked with path in quotes and double slashes only.

I am ssh-ing from a mac into another mac though.

Proposition of a solution inspired by this answer .

In order to copy a file from a remote server to your local home computer you will need to open a terminal on your home computer and write a command structured like this :

scp -P $PORT_NUMBER $USERNAME@$IP_ADDRESS:$PATH_TO_THE_FILE_TO_COPY $PATH_TO_DESTINATION

---

Explanations :

scp : 

Secure Copy command more infos here

$PORT_NUMBER: 

SSH have a default port set to 22, you can edit this port here ex: 23

$USERNAME: 

the username access

$IP_ADDRESS: 

the ip of the remote access

$PATH_TO_THE_FILE_TO_COPY: 

the path where you want to get the file

$PATH_TO_DESTINATION: 

the path where you want to copy the file

---

For exemple :

scp -P 22 johndoe@$011.235.813.213:/var/projects/calculator/tests/week-1 /Users/John/transit/

---

Advices :

• Be sure to have the necessary rights on the element you want to copy from your server.
• ⚠️ Init this command from your home computer not from the server ⚠️

---

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