Sometimes you are on a server where you generate export file. It’s easy to just scp the file from the server to your local machine.

scp [email protected]:/tmp/myfile.csv  /tmp/local_folder/

But some times you are dealing with a situation where you can ssh but you cannot scp (AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a good example)

If the file don’t contain private data (passwords, emails) what you can do is email the file on your work email.

Steps:

  • install mutt mail command (simple mailng inteface supporting attachment files)
  • compress your file / folder
  • send file attachment with with mutt

mutt syntax:

echo "mail body" | mutt -a file -s "Subject" -- [email protected]

example:

## install mutt command:
#
# sudo apt-get install mutt
# sudo yum install mutt

# Given we have generated `views.csv` file
gzip views.csv
echo "mail body" | mutt -a views.csv.gz -s "MyApp view stat files" -- [email protected]


# Given we mupltiple files in directory `views/`
tar -zcvf views.tar.gz views/
du -sh views.tar.gz

echo "mail body" | mutt -a views.tar.gz -s "MyApp view stat files" -- [email protected]

Warning I do recommend to encrypt the file before sending

e.g.:


zip -P password file.zip file

# ...or:

zip -e file.zip file

# ...or:

gpg -o fileToTar.tgz.gpg --symmetric fileToTar.tgz

# to decrypt
gpg fileToTar.tgz.gpg

Lazy solution - Copy output & paste clipboard with xclip

This is quite a lazy but really effective way for 95% of cases where you need to copy some output from server to your laptop

works on Ubuntu not sure about OsX

You need xclip command

sudo apt install xclip
  1. ssh / connect to bash of server.
  2. Output some results to console (e.g cat /tmp/myfile.csv)
  3. Just copy the console output (select and SHIFT+CTRL+c)
  4. In other terminal (you laptop) type xclip -o /tmp/mylocalcopy.csv

Chances are you will also pase some clipboard junk so open the file and remove stuff you don’t need

Now reason why you don’t want to use just paste (e.g. with ctrl+shift+v in Vim is that it is time expensive

Transfer large files to server

https://blog.eq8.eu/til/transfer-file-to-server.html

Sources