It uses for data transfer, and uses the same authentication and provides the same security as a login session.
will ask for passwords or passphrases if they are needed for authentication.
The and may be specified as a local pathname, a remote host with optional path in the form or a URI in the form Local file names can be made explicit using absolute or relative pathnames to avoid treating file names containing as host specifiers.
When copying between two remote hosts, if the URI format is used, a cannot be specified on the if the option is used.
The options are as follows: Copies between two remote hosts are transferred through the local host. Without this option the data is copied directly between the two remote hosts. Note that, when using the legacy SCP protocol (via the flag), this option selects batch mode for the second host as cannot ask for passwords or passphrases for both hosts. This mode is the default. Forces to use IPv4 addresses only. Forces to use IPv6 addresses only. Allows forwarding of to the remote system. The default is not to forward an authentication agent. Selects batch mode (prevents asking for passwords or passphrases). Compression enable. Passes the flag to to enable compression. Selects the cipher to use for encrypting the data transfer. This option is directly passed to When using the SFTP protocol support via connect directly to a local SFTP server program rather than a remote one via This option may be useful in debugging the client and server. Specifies an alternative per-user configuration file for This option is directly passed to Selects the file from which the identity (private key) for public key authentication is read. This option is directly passed to Connect to the target host by first making an connection to the jump host described by and then establishing a TCP forwarding to the ultimate destination from there. Multiple jump hops may be specified separated by comma characters. This is a shortcut to specify a configuration directive. This option is directly passed to Limits the used bandwidth, specified in Kbit/s. Use the legacy SCP protocol for file transfers instead of the SFTP protocol. Forcing the use of the SCP protocol may be necessary for servers that do not implement SFTP, for backwards-compatibility for particular filename wildcard patterns and for expanding paths with a prefix for older SFTP servers. Can be used to pass options to in the format used in This is useful for specifying options for which there is no separate command-line flag. For full details of the options listed below, and their possible values, see
Specifies the port to connect to on the remote host. Note that this option is written with a capital because is already reserved for preserving the times and mode bits of the file. Preserves modification times, access times, and file mode bits from the source file. Quiet mode: disables the progress meter as well as warning and diagnostic messages from Copies between two remote hosts are performed by connecting to the origin host and executing there. This requires that running on the origin host can authenticate to the destination host without requiring a password. Recursively copy entire directories. Note that follows symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal. Name of to use for the encrypted connection. The program must understand options. Disable strict filename checking. By default when copying files from a remote host to a local directory checks that the received filenames match those requested on the command-line to prevent the remote end from sending unexpected or unwanted files. Because of differences in how various operating systems and shells interpret filename wildcards, these checks may cause wanted files to be rejected. This option disables these checks at the expense of fully trusting that the server will not send unexpected filenames. Verbose mode. Causes and to print debugging messages about their progress. This is helpful in debugging connection, authentication, and configuration problems. is based on the rcp program in source code from the Regents of the University of California.
Since OpenSSH 8.8, has use the SFTP protocol for transfers by default. The legacy SCP protocol (selected by the flag) requires execution of the remote user's shell to perform pattern matching. This requires careful quoting of any characters that have special meaning to the remote shell, such as quote characters.