Transfering files using a linux terminal

rsync (remote synchronization) in linux can be used to efficienty sync files and directories between two hosts or machines. This is better than other commands that just copy files because rsync only copies differences (so you can keep things up to date without copying things that are the same in both directories). It is simple to use:

rsync local-file user@remote-host:remote-file

For example, to copy something (something.py) from the “/Desktop/research/codes/” directory on my computer to my dara home, I can open a terminal (on my machine) and run the command

rsync -a ~/Desktop/research/codes/something.pi ask126@dara.phyast.pitt.edu:/home/ask126/

This will first ssh to dara so it asks for a password. “ask126” is my username so replace it with yours. The “-a” is to activate archine mode.

To copy all the files in the directory “something” to your home directory on dara, you can do something like (note the forward slashes /, they matter)

rsync -a ~/Desktop/research/codes/something/ ask126@dara.phyast.pitt.edu:/home/ask126/