Question
Attempting to scp from one droplet to another only copied to local droplet
- Posted on March 5, 2024
- DigitalOcean DropletsNetworking
Asked by JetForMe
I had to instantiate a droplet from a snapshot of another droplet to recover some files I managed to delete. I logged into the new Droplet (lz2), created an ssh key pair, and copied and pasted the id_rsa.pub key contents to the authorized_keys file on the orignal Droplet. I was able to ssh to it after that without issue.
But try as I might, I could not get scp or rsync to work. They would just copy to the local host. I tried invoking it several different ways:
rmann@lz2:~$ scp nginx.tgz lz1:
rmann@lz2:~$ scp nginx.tgz lz1:ng.tgz
rmann@lz2:~$ scp nginx.tgz rmann@lz1:ng.tgz
rmann@lz2:~$ scp nginx.tgz <lz1’s IP address>:ng.tgz
All of them resulted in ng.tgz being created in ~rmann on lz2. For the life of me I can’t figure out what was happening.
I ended up copying the file down to my laptop from lz2 and back up to lz1.
Any idea why it wouldn’t copy from one Droplet to the other, but also not give me an error, isntead copying to the local machine?
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Hey!
When you’re using
scpto copy files from one host to another, the syntax should specify the source and destination clearly. If you’re executing the command fromlz2and want to copy a file tolz1, you should specify the user and host for the destination along with the full path. Ifrmannis your username on both droplets andlz1is the hostname or IP address of the destination droplet, the command should look like this:Or, if you want to use the IP address of
lz1, it would be:This command tells
scpto copynginx.tgzto the/home/your-user/directory onlz1, saving it asng.tgz.If these commands still result in the file being copied to the local machine (lz2), it’s highly unusual behavior for
scp. Ensure that the hostname or IP address forlz1is correct and reachable. If there’s any confusion about the hostnames, using the IP address can eliminate any potential DNS or host file misconfigurations.Also, using the
-vflag for verbose output can help diagnose the issue, as it will provide detailed information about thescpprocess and where it might be going wrong.Let me know how it goes!
Best,
Bobby
Heya @jetforme,
Okay, if you can SSH from one droplet to the other then you have access between them. From where did you run SCP? You’ll need to enter one of the Droplets(it doesn’t matter which, it would matter only to the command) and SCP the files to or from the other.
Now, let’s assume you have SSHed to Droplet 1 and you need to copy files from Droplet 2 to Droplet 1.
Here is how it should work
usernamewith your username on Droplet 2,droplet2_ipwith Droplet 2’s IP address,/path/to/remote/filewith the file’s path on Droplet 2, and/local/droplet1/pathwith the path on Droplet 1 where you want the file to be copied to. That should do the trick.