How do I use sftp to get a directory and all its contents?
You can connect to the host using sftp -r
and then get
the directory. If you forget to use -r
when you connect, you can use get -r
.
sftp -r me@somehost
Or
sftp> get -r tmp/
Fetching /home/me/tmp/ to tmp
Retrieving /home/me/tmp
/home/me/new.orig.dmp 100% 417KB 416.8KB/s 00:00
/home/me/untangle.dmp 100% 398KB 398.3KB/s 00:00
/home/me/repos.orig.dmp 100% 415KB 415.2KB/s 00:00
/home/me/me-untangle.dmp 100% 32KB 32.4KB/s 00:00
sftp>
If you want to always ensure you pass -r
to sftp
, add it as an alias to your ~/.bashrc
or similar.
alias sftp="sftp -r"
From man 1 sftp
-r Recursively copy entire directories when uploading and download‐
ing. Note that sftp does not follow symbolic links encountered
in the tree traversal.
.........
get [-Ppr] remote-path [local-path]
........
If either the -P or -p flag is specified, then full file permis‐
sions and access times are copied too.
If the -r flag is specified then directories will be copied
recursively. Note that sftp does not follow symbolic links when
performing recursive transfers.
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Paul
Senior Aerospace Engineer Specialties: Multiphysics Modeling and Simulation Heterogeneous Multiscale Methods Computational Orbital Mechanics Computational Electromagnetics Computational Solid Mechanics Computational Fluid Dynamics Computational Heat Transfer Finite Difference Methods Computational Robotics Finite Element Methods Finite Volume Methods Numerical Analysis Calculus Jokes Analogies Education: PhD. Computational Science M.S. Computational Science M.S. Applied Mathematics B.S. Mathematics and Spanish Past: Computational Scientist Thermal Engineer NASA Intern NSF Fellow Lecturer.
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Paul over 1 year
When I try to use the command
get
from sftp, I get the error saying that it is not a normal file. Is there a way around this?-
Admin almost 12 yearsI think you're right... it is a duplicate... but the answer given by @uther is more thorough than the answer given before to the other question... Is there a way to post his answer onto the other question. Since my question is so similarly, feel free to delete my question but please repost his answer on the other question.
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C.C. over 11 yearswhy does not my sftp client didn't has a -r option? >>>>>sftp: illegal option -- r
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CrackerJack9 over 10 yearssftp: illegal option -- r on CentOS 6.4 openssh-clients-5.3p1-84.1.el6.x86_64
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Supravat Mondal about 9 yearsin my ubuntu OS , its working.