Linux File Transfer (not ftp)

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, 2006-06-12 at 14:42 -0400, Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
> > Yes, if you are going to be transferring more than one file you
> > might as well do it in way you can interrupt and restart
> > efficiently.  And, scp doesn't have the handy and obvious
> > '-a' counterpart to gnu cp and rsync.
> 
> Nor the fabulously efficient transfer of only the changed bits of a
> file.  :)
> 
> I agree completely that rsync is a better tool for most jobs like this
> and use it all the time myself, while I only rarely use scp.
> 
> Of course, it's man page is rather large and can be daunting to get
> your head around on first read.  But it's features make it well worth
> the time spent learning to use it.

I find this technique works for almost everything I want to copy:
cd source_dir
rsync -essh -av . user at remote_host:/path/to/dir
(or individual files/wildcards may be specified instead of . for
the whole current directory tree).
The final element on the target path will be created if it doesn't
exist (but only one) and by specifying . as the source you don't
have to remember whether or not to add a trailing slash to a
directory name.  For low bandwidth connections I might throw
in the -z flag for compression.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com