SCP from remote to local does not work

Question

I can scp just fine from local to remove by doing:

scp trip3.csv [email protected]:/home/pi/

But when I try to do remote to local it says no such file or directory:

scp [email protected]:/home/pi/trip3.csv /Users/andrew/Desktop

When i try scp [email protected]:/home/pi/image.jpg ~ it asks for my remote password and shows that the transfer went through, but i can't find the file on my local machine.

Any thoughts?

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This is where I am now:

step 1 - ssh into remote host

step 2 - sudo scp [email protected]:image.jpg ~ which gives this response: [email protected]'s password:

step 3 - i enter the correct password which gives this: image.jpg 100% 163KB 162.7KB/s 00:00

step 4 - on local machine i do cd ~ followed by ls | grep image.jpg which does not give any output just a new command line

Solution

You have a pretty fundamental mis-understanding of how scp works.

Assuming "local" is where you want the file to end up, and "remote" is where the file is now, do this:

scp user@remote:/path/to/file.name ~

~ can be replaced with where ever you want the file to go on local.

DO NOT ssh to remote first. When you ssh to remote then run that command you are effectively copy the file from remote to remote, which is not what you want.

Do what you are doing, but skip step 1. Run the scp from bash/terminal on your local machine, don't ssh to remote first.

(deleting my other answer as it is no longer relevant)

Comments

[muru]

You scp'd from local to remote and are searching for the file in local? O.o

[metersk]

@muru according to this, i thought i had the right formatting hypexr.org/linux_scp_help.php do you know how i can this properly?

[muru]

Ok, help me understand this. Call one system A, the other B. You SSH'd from A to B - irrelevant. Then you scp'd from A to B on B. Therefore a file is now on B. You are looking for the file on A. Am I right?

[metersk]

@muru System A is my Laptop, System B is my Raspberry Pi: I ssh'd from A into B. I have a file on B that I want on A. I thought I was scp'ing from B to A, hence me looking for the file on A.

[metersk]

@muru scp ~/image.jpg [email protected]:image.jpg did not work. i got this dialog in raspberry pi [email protected]'s password: image.jpg 100% 163KB 162.7KB/s 00:00 but no file in ~ on local

[floodpants]

@Meepl step one is ssh step 4 is looking on the local machine. Are you looking for the file on the same machine you ssh into in step 1?

[metersk]

@drixny I ssh from laptop into RPi. I attempt to send a file from RPi to laptop. I look for file on laptop.