Question

I’m trying to upload a folder from my local machine to a remote server using putty command.

I’m trying to copy a folder and subfolder using this syntax

scp -r [file/folder to be copied] some_user@my_ip:[destination_folder]

I can login ok and run the command but get an error to the local path ?

I have tried different paths to the local folder ie. c:/folder/folder – /folder/folder etc but i get an error saying no such file or directory exists – so I’m asking what is the correct path to include if the folder you want to copy is on your local machine – c:/documents/upload/folder

Answer 1

The folder you are trying to copy into does not exist on your server and scp will not create it for you. You can copy a local folder recursively into an existing folder on your target machine as

scp -r localfolder name@host:destination

and you will now have destination/localfolder at the remote system.

If you want to copy the files into destination, but not the localfolder itself you can use

scp -r localfolder/* name@host:destination

and your files (and subdirectories) from local folder will now be in your destination on the remote system.

But I don’t know of any way for scp to create the destination folder should it not exist.