File Transfer

Transferring Files

Linux and Mac Command Line

You may transfer files between your workstation and the cluster on the command line using the scp command. This command behaves much like the basic Linux cp command, except you may use a remote address as the source or destination file. The syntax is as follows:

scp source_file destination_file

The following command will copy the file testfile from the /home/remoteuser/ directory on the remote server cypress1.tulane.edu to your workstation's local directory "." (a period represents the current working directory).

user@localhost> scp remoteuser@cypress1.tulane.edu:/home/remoteuser/testfile .

To copy a directory along with all its contents you will need to add the -r recursive flag. The following command will copy the simdata directory and all its contents to your local machine.

user@localhost> scp -r remoteuser@cypress1.tulane.edu:/home/remoteuser/simdata .

Graphical Software

There are many graphical file transfer solutions available. The following are the three most popular and are fairly intuitive. Be sure to set each to connect to the cluster using the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).

Filezillla is available on all platforms. Be careful when downloading and installing as the hosting site, sourceforge, has begun to bundle bloatware with its downloads. ​FileZilla

Fetch is a full-featured file transfer client for Mac and is free to the academic community ​Fetch

WinSCP is a free Windows client. ​WinSCP