Overview
This tutorial assumes that you will be using a command line application for performing file transfers instead of a GUI-based application such as WinSCP.
You can transfer files to and from the OSG Connect login node using the
scp command. Note scp is a counterpart to the secure shell
command,ssh, that allows for secure, encrypted file transfers between
systems using your ssh credentials.
When using scp, you will always need to specify both the source of the
content that you wish to copy and the destination of where you would like
the copy to end up. For example:
$ scp <source> <destination>
Files on remote systems (like an OSG Connect login node) are indicated using
username@machine:/path/to/file.
Transfer Files To OSG Connect
Let's say you have a file name my_file.txt you wish to transfer to the OSG Connect login node.
Using the terminal application on your computer, navigate to the location of my_file.txt.
Then use the following scp command to tranfer my_file.txt to your /home on OSG Connect. Note
that you will not be logged into OSG Connect when you perform this step.
$ scp my_file.txt username@loginNN.osgconnect.net:/home/username/
Where NN is the specific number of your assigned login node (i.e. 04 or 05).
Large files (>100MB in size) to be used as input to jobs can be uploaded to your /public directory also using scp:
$ scp my_large_file.gz username@loginNN.osgconnect.net:/public/username/
Transfer Directories To OSG Connect
To copy directories using scp, add the (recursive) -r option to your scp command.
For example:
$ scp -r my_Dir username@loginNN.osgconnect.net:/home/username/
Transfer Files From OSG Connect
To transfer files from OSG Connect back to your laptop or desktop you can use the scp as shown above,
but with the OSG Connect location being the source (listed first) and the destination being a location on your personal computer:
$ scp username@loginNN.osgconnect.net:/home/username/my_file.txt ./
where ./ sets the destination of the copy to your current location on your computer
Transfer Files Between OSG Connect and Another Server
scp can be used to transfer files between OSG Connect and another server that you have
ssh access to. This means that files don't have to first be transferred to your
personal computer which can save a lot of time and effort! For example, to transfer
a file from another server and your OSG Connect login node /home directory with a command on your personal computer:
$ scp username@serverhostname:/path/to/my_file.txt username@loginNN.osgconnect.net:/home/username
Be sure to use the username assigned to you on the other server and to provide the full path on the other server to your file.
Get Help
For assistance or questions, please email the OSG Research Facilitation team at support@opensciencegrid.org or visit the help desk and community forums.
This page was updated on Jun 21, 2022 at 18:17 from start/data/scp.md.