Guide to Working with Remote Servers

Practical Bash commands for connecting to, transferring files with, and packaging data on remote servers.

1. Connect via SSH

Specify the user, host name, and port to open the session.

ssh admin@192.168.32.130 -p 22

The -p flag sets the remote port (the default is 22).

If you still need to configure an SSH service, see Creación de un Servidor SSH.

You can test the connection by appending a remote command.

ssh admin@192.168.32.130 -p 22 whoami

admin@192.168.32.130's password:
admin

When your SSH key is trusted, authentication completes without prompting for a password.

ssh admin@192.168.32.130 -p 22 whoami

admin

If you need to generate a key pair, follow Creación de llaves SSH.

Move files or folders between your machine and a remote server with scp.

Copy a remote file to the local machine.

scp -P 22 user@host:/backup.tar.gz backup.tar.gz

Push a local file to the server.

scp -P 22 backup.tar.gz user@host:/backup.tar.gz

Sync entire directories (use the recursive -r flag).

scp -P 22 -r user@host:/folder folder

scp -P 22 -r folder user@host:/folder

Options:

Option	Description
`-P`	Port exposed by the SSH server.
`-r`	Recursive copy of subdirectories and files.

You can also transfer between two remotes; the -3 option routes traffic through your local machine.

scp -3 \
  user1@host1:/original.tar.gz \
  user2@host2:/copy.tar.gz

Create and extract *.tar.gz archives.

tar -czvf project.tar.gz /path/to/project

tar -xzvf project.tar.gz

Work with *.zip archives.

zip -r carpeta.zip /ruta/de/la/carpeta

unzip carpeta.zip

If your distro doesn't include zip support, install the unzip package.

sudo apt-get install unzip

Published: June 1, 2020