PSCP - A secure FTP replacement

PSCP is a freeware SCP (Secure CoPy) program for the Windows command line processor. You can use this program instead of FTP for copying files to or from the Unix/Linux servers . FTP is not allowed from clients outside  to servers inside the firewall because FTP leaves passwords in plain-text and vulnerable to eavesdropping. PSCP should work with any host supporting SSH .
This is an alternative to using the http based facility
Details:
  • Download PSCP here.
  • Save pscp.exe somewhere on your hard drive. C:\windows\ is a good location in the default execution path.
  • The command line syntax is:

    • pscp [options] [user@]host:source target 
    • pscp [options] source [source...] [user@]host:target
      Options:
      -p preserve file attributes
      -q quiet, don't show statistics
      -r copy directories recursively
      -v show verbose messages
      -P port connect to specified port
      -pw passw login with specified password

      source or target may be a pathname or a ~userid/filename (on the Unix side). You will be prompted for the password of `user'. This is an old-fashioned command line program - you need to open a DOS window to run it.
Copying files from your UNIX host to your Windows PC.
  • In order to copy a file from your UNIX host to your Windows PC your command line would look like this:

    • pscp username@yourhost:file.foo c:\temp\file.foo 
    • This command line copies "file.foo" located in your home directory on your UNIX host to the temp directory on your C:\ drive.
Copying files from your Windows PC to our UNIX host.
  • In order to copy a file from your Windows PC to your our Unix host your command line would look like this:

    • pscp -v c:\"my documents"\file.foo username@nber.org:file.foo
    • This command line copies "file.foo" located in the "my documents" directory on your C:\ drive to your home directory on our Unix cluster.
    • Remember: Backslashes (\) for your DOS and Windows files and forward slashes (/) for your UNIX files.
For more on PSCP see the PuTTY homepage.

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