scp is returning a permissions denied, not sure why?

Question

scp -i ~/.ssh/my_id_rsa -P 30000 some_file.gz  sshuser@1.2.3.4:/home/sshuser/

And it returned:

scp:/some_file.gz: Permission denied

The rsa key file is the same file I use to connect via SSH (along with the port # and username and i.p)

Does anything stand out that could be causing the permission issue?

UPDATE

I have iptables running, do I need another entry for scp or does it use ssh protocol? (silly question but just making sure here!)

I'm not getting a 'connection refused' error so not sure if this is the issue.

Do you have permission to read the file on your local system?
Can you do cp some_file.gz /dev/null under the same conditions that the scp is failing?
Can you run scp with --verbose option and post the result somewhere (e.g. on pastebin)?
/some_file.gz in the error message of your scp call looks like you're trying to copy the file to the root directory (/) of the remote server. Is /home/sshuser/ filled in by a variable or do you literally provide that directory as a target?

Khaled · Answer 1 · 2010-11-27 08:01:44Z

From the error shown above, it seems that you don't have enough permission to read the file:

scp:/some_file.gz: Permission denied

If you are confused whether the problem is network related or file system related, you can check it separately.

First, you can use ssh to make sure you can connect to the remote host.

$ ssh -p 30000 sshuser@1.2.3.4

Second, you can use cp (as noted by Dennis Williamson) to make sure you can read the file.

You will get the "connection refused" error when you try to connect to a closed port on the remote host.

1 Answer