Using Internet Services

28 Chapter4

Transferring Files with rcp

Using rcp

You can use rcp to copy one or more ﬁles or directories from the local

host to a remote host, as in the following example:

rcp /tmp/memo1 /tmp/memo2 basil:/home/basil/roger

This example copies /tmp/memo1 and /tmp/memo2 from the local host to

user roger’s home directory on host basil. The last path on the

command line is taken as the destination path, and all paths beforeit are

copied to the destination.

You can use rcp to copy one or more remote ﬁles or directories to the

local host. With the -r (recursive) option, you can use rcp to copy the

contents of a directory and all its subdirectories, as in the following

example:

rcp -r sage:/home/sage/gwen /home/dill/gwen

This example copies the contents of user gwen’s home directory from host

sage to the directory /home/dill/gwen on the local host.

If you do not specify a full path name, the path name is interpreted

relative to your home directory, as in the following example:

rcp memo* *mail sage:june_mail

This example copies all ﬁles whose names begin with memo and all ﬁles

whose names end with mail from the user’s local home directory to the

directory june_mail in the user’s home directory on host sage.

NOTE Any output generated by commands in a .login, .profile, or .cshrc

ﬁle on the remote host can cause rcp errors.

CAUTION Do not attempt to copy a ﬁle over itself, as in the following example:

rcp /home/cheryl/.profile /home/cheryl/.profile

This can corrupt the ﬁle’s contents.