Chapters 4 - 7 of Shotts text will be covered next
sftp is useful for transferring individual files between systems. It can also be useful if you need to retrieve a file from a remote system and you don't know what the file is.
scp is useful to transfer one unite of information nad you know exactly where the information is. Alos, there is the option to transfer entire directories.
Never use ftp. Any protocol that requires username and password should be encrypted.
Selection of ASCII or binary mode is automatic when using sftp
Ascii mode transfers files as 'text'. Examples of ascii files would be .txt, .asp, .html, and .php files...
Examples of binary files would be .wav, .jpg, .gif, and mp3 files...
most remote commands have a local counterpart, which is invoked by prefixing l to the remote command (e.g. pwd / lpwd, ls / lls, cd / lcd )
A connection is initiated using:
sftp [user@]remotesystem
It is very common to need to copy a single piece of information between systems. This may be a file or a directory. In this case, scp is much easier than sftp. Note that with scp you connect, transfer and disconnect in a single command.
To copy to a remote system:
scp [ -r ] localpath [user@]remotedomain:[remotepath]
To copy from a remote system:
scp [ -r ] [user@]remotedomain:remotepath localpath