How to make scp copy hidden files?

Question

I often use SCP to copy files around - particularly web-related files. The problem is that whenever I do this, I can't get my command to copy hidden files (eg, .htaccess).

I typically invoke this:

scp -rp src/ user@server:dest/

This doesn't copy hidden files. I don't want to have to invoke this again (by doing something like scp -rp src/.* ... - and that has strange . and .. implications anyway.

I didn't see anything in the scp man page about an "include hidden files".

How can I accomplish this?

Answer 1

That should absolutely match hidden files. The / at the end of the source says "every file under this directory". Nevertheless, testing and research bear you out. This is stupid behavior.

The "answer" is to append a dot to the end of the source: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/moving-home-data-from-old-system-to-new-linux-system.html

The real answer is to use rsync.

Answer 2

You can try rsync. It's better suited for this job:

rsync -av src/ user@server:dest/

(And its manual page is worth reading.)

Answer 3

Don't put a slash after the source directory. Your code would look like this:

scp -rp src user@server:dest/

This will create a directory 'src' under 'dest' on the remote machine, with all the hidden files included. It's probably not exactly what you want, but it will copy hidden files in src.

Answer 4

Try this:
cd mydir
scp -pr ./ name@host:/path/mydir/

Answer 5

None of the above scp solutions worked for me. However, I did find that the following worked on cygwin: scp -r directory/* host:directory The '*' matched all visible files and skipped the invisible.