# Secure Copy Protocol (SCP) SCP is a file transfer protocol that uses [[Secure Shell (SSH)]] to securely copy files between a local and a remote host, or between two remote hosts. It provides authentication and encryption inherited from SSH — no data is transmitted in the clear. Basic usage: ```bash # Copy local file to remote host scp file.txt user@host:/path/ # Copy remote file to local machine scp user@host:/path/file.txt . # Copy recursively scp -r local_dir/ user@host:/path/ # Copy with a specific SSH port scp -P 2222 file.txt user@host:/path/ ``` SCP is simple and effective for quick one-off file transfers. For more advanced use cases (directory listings, resume, partial transfers), [[SFTP]] or [[rsync]] are better alternatives. Note that [[OpenSSH]] considers SCP deprecated in favor of SFTP, though the `scp` command in modern OpenSSH versions actually uses the SFTP protocol under the hood by default. ## References - https://man.openbsd.org/scp ## Related - [[Secure Shell (SSH)]] - [[OpenSSH]] - [[SFTP]] - [[rsync]] - [[Linux]]