Re: transferring directories with scp/rsync?

[fgeek@hack.fi (Henri Salo)]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 06:54:30PM -0400, Zach Uram wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a directory /tmp/foo on my local host alpha.org and I wish to
> transfer it to user Bob (/home/bob) in dirctory $HOME/www/bar on
> remote host beta.org. How precisely can I do this 1) using scp 2)
> using rsync? I would like to see the commands for doing this with both
> methods. Ssh is running on both hosts.
> 
> Also what happens if the directory already existed on the remote host
> and has some of the same file names. Is it possible to use md5sums so
> that if a file is exact (same hash) it will prompt me and ask if I
> want to over-write it before it does?
> 
> Zach
> 

If you prefer scp you can make a tar archive of contents first:
tar -cvvf package.tar.gz /tmp/foo
and transfer it to beta.org:
scp package.tar.gz bob@beta.org:/home/bob/www/bar
In beta.org:
cd /home/bob/www/bar ; tar xvzf package.tar.gz ; rm package.tar.gz

Issuing this command on alpha.org will synchronize content of /tmp/foo
to /home/bob/www/bar in beta.org:
rsync -a /tmp/foo bob@beta.org:/home/bob/www/bar

Scp will overwrite your files if beta.org has same filesnames in that
directory.

- Henri Salo