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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T09:50:08+00:00

I need to ssh into a Windows 7 box running MobaSSH as its SSH

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I need to ssh into a Windows 7 box running MobaSSH as its SSH daemon, and the username on the Windows box contains a space. I can login to the Windows 7 box on an OSX terminal like so:

ssh "Some User"@WindowsHost

So I thought I’d be able to use the scp command on OSX to transfer files between the computers, but I keep getting an error saying “invalid username” whenever I do something like this:

scp myfile "Some User"@WindowsHost:~/myfile

I looked into it and found this question on stackoverflow, but that is mainly about a space within the file paths.

I did find a bug posted about this issue in a specific version of scp, but I’m not sure how to patch scp on OSX. The patch is offered as a .c file.

My last resort is to create a new username on the Windows 7 box and transfer all my profile settings to that new user. It seems like a real hassle given that I can login via ssh, but not scp.

Any tips?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Add a special configuration to your Mac user’s ssh config, usually in ~/.ssh/config

    Host mySpaceyUsernameHost
User "Some User"
HostName WindowsHost

    You should then be able to scp your file using that named configuration:

    scp myfile mySpaceyUsernameHost:~/myfile

    I just tried this on OS X 10.7 (Lion) and it worked from one Mac to another, whereas the other options (quoted, or backlash-escaped) did not…. so that’s something.

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