ssh and scp one-liners

 Mon, 03 Nov 2025 19:33 UTC

Image: CC BY 4.0 by cybrkyd

My cheat sheet of ssh and scp one-liners.

# Generate a new key
- Follow the prompts to setup desired key-type and key location.

ssh-keygen

# Copy specific key to remote server

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@server.com

Or, copy with non-default port…

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub -p 1234 user@server.com

If using a non-standard named key

SSH auto-loads only standard names by default. Add the following to ~/.ssh/config to ensure that connections can be made without a password.

Host server
    HostName server.com
    User bob
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_bobby
    IdentitiesOnly yes

Further reading for SSH passwordless login.¹

# Remove a key from known_hosts

ssh-keygen -f '~/.ssh/known_hosts' -R '192.168.0.187'

SCP

# Transfer files to remote

scp -P 1234 "file.txt" user@192.168.1.20:/var/www/html/dir

Or, transfer files with non-default port…

scp -P 1234 "file.txt" user@192.168.1.20:/var/www/html/dir

# Transfer files from remote to local

scp user@192.168.1.20:/var/www/html/dir/file.txt /home/user/Documents

# Transfer local to local

scp archive.tar.gz 192.168.1.10:/home/user/Documents