SFTP

Within these castle walls be forged Mavens of Computer Science ...

— Merlin, The Coder

Introduction

SSH is a secure way of accessing servers. We will be using SSH to upload and download a file from Coder Merlin.

Prerequisites

An SSH client

Linux and Mac operating systems have a built-in terminal that is a secure shell client. Windows users can either use puTTY or the secure shell extension on Google Chrome. This extension works on all Chromium-based browsers like Opera. You will need an SSH client to download and upload files. We will be using the Google Chrome Extension in this demonstration.

Starting the Secure Shell Chrome extension in SFTP mode

Click the Secure Shell Chrome Extension's icon and choose connection dialog. The connection string is in the firstname-lastname@host format. To Connect to the Code Merlin server, type in the following:

 queen-guinevere@ssh.codermerlin.academy

To connect, click SFTP .

Helpful Hint

FTP, SFTP, SSH and SFTP
SFTP is an improvement of the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and FTPS (File Transfer Protocol with support for Transport Layer Security). FTP is unencrypted. FTPS is encrypted by either TLS or SSL. SFTP runs over SSH. In fact, it uses port 22 too.

Uploading

The PUT command

We will be using the PUT command to upload files (and directories) from a local computer to a remote server. The PUT command has the following syntax:

 put <file> [ [ <file2> ... ] <directory>/[ <newname> ] ]

All parameters except the

 <file>

parameter are optional.

You can specify the upload directory using the

 <directory>

parameter. If no upload directory is specified, the file is uploaded to the working directory.

The MPUT command

The MPUT command lets you upload multiple files simultaneously and has the following syntax:

 mput filename1 filename2 filename3 ...

Observe

Observe, Ponder, and Journal: :The RSYNC command

The

 rysnc

command is used to upload a whole directory. It is more powerful than the PUT and the MPUT commands because it uploads (syncs) only those files that have been altered. What is its syntax?

Uploading

Create a file called file.txt on your computer.

Type put.

Browse for the file.

Confirm that the file has been uploaded with the ls command, which lists all directories and files in the working directory.

Type

 ls

Downloading

The GET command

The get command lets you download one or more files from a remote server to a local computer. It has the following syntax:

 get <file> [ [ <file2> ... ] <directory>\[ <newname> ] ]

Downloading

To download the file you've just uploaded, type

 get file.txt