Unix copy file from windows to unix

In this updated guide, I will walk you through the steps to copy files from Windows to Linux using easy-to-follow steps.

I will show you two ways to copy files from windows to Linux

1. Using command line with pscp
2. Using GUI FTP utility.

Copy File from Windows To Linux Using PSCP

It is not always that you will need to copy a file from Windows to Linux or vice versa.

But at times when you are automating things or trying to achieve some copy functionality using a script, it is good to have a utility to do that.

Here is where pscp comes into play. Using pscp you can copy the file to/from windows and Linux.

Step 1: Download pscp.exe from here. Select the appropriate package.

Step 2: copy the pscp.exe executable to the system32 directory of your windows machine. This folder normally exists in C:WindowsSystem32 path.

Step 3: Open Windows PowerShell and use the following command to verify if pscp is accessible from the path.

pscp

You should see the following output.

Step 4: Use the following format to copy the single file from Windows to the Linux box.

pscp -pw password C:UsersAdminDesktoptest.txt  
[email protected]:/home/vagrant

Here is the explanation of the command.

1. -pw for the password.
2. Replace password with the Linux user password.
3. C:UsersAdminDesktoptest.txt represents the path of the file that has to be copied to the Linux system.
4. 192.168.33.10 is the IP of the Linux server.
5. /home/vagrant is the user-accessible path in the Linux system to copy the file.

If you want to copy all the files in a directory to Linux, you need to add a start to the folder. eg. folder*. An example is shown below.

pscp -pw password C:UsersAdminDesktopfolder*  
[email protected]:/home/vagrant

If you are using Linux private keys for authentication, you can use -i flag instead of -pw followed by the path to the .ppk , .pem or id_rsa file.

If your key file is in pem format, you can use the puttygen command to convert it to ppk. See this ec2 server guide for the pem to ppk conversion.

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For Linux Private key-based authentication, the command looks like below.

pscp -i /path/to/key.ppk C:UsersAdminDesktoptest.txt 
[email protected]:/home/vagrant

Copy File From Linux To Windows Using PSCP

You can use pscp to copy files from Linux to windows. use the following command format for the same.

pscp -pw password [email protected]:/path/to/file 
C:UsersAdminDesktop

The above command will copy the file in Linux from the specified path to the Windows desktop.

Copy File from Windows To Linux Using FTP GUI

If you are not familiar with the Windows command line, you can use an FTP tool like Filezilla.

This tool is really helpful if you are working with Web Hosting providers to upload your website files from your local workstation.

You can download Filezilla from here –> FileZilla Download.

After download, install Filzill as you install any other windows software.

After installation, open the Filezilla app and enter the remote Linux server details as shown below. It will connect to the server and shows the remote server files in the file explorer.

To upload a file, all you have to do is do a right-click and click upload, as shown in the image below. The file will get uploaded to the remote path, which is opened in the Filezilla explorer. You can also change the remote path from Filezilla.

Conclusion

I have shown two best and recommended ways to transfer files from Windows to Linux and vice versa.

If you face any issues while copying files, please drop the issues as a comment. I will look into it.

I’m a CentOS 6 User so I tried this method on CentOS 6

Install samba using

[root@server ~]# yum install samba

Query for confirm

[root@server ~]# rpm -qa samba
samba-3.5.10-125.el6.i686

Create a Samba User.

[root@server ~]# useradd sambashare

Now create samba password for username sambashare using smbpasswd command.

[root@server ~]# smbpasswd -a sambashare
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:
Added user sambashare.

Create a samba share directory

[root@server ~]# mkdir /share

change the ownership for the share folder

[root@server ~]# chown -R sambashare:sambashare /share/

Open the file /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the below lines.

[share]
comment = Share
path = /share
writable = yes
valid users = sambashare

Start samba service

[root@server ~]# service smb restart
Shutting down SMB services:                                [  OK  ]
Starting SMB services:                                     [  OK  ]

Check your configuration by using testparm command

.
.
[share]
comment = share
path = /share
valid users = sambashare
read only = No

In windows system type this in run

Now enter samba username and password

You are done

This is a classic article written by Swapnil Bhartiya from the Linux.com archives. For more great SysAdmin tips and techniques check out our free intro to Linux course.

If you run a live or home server, moving files between local machines or two remote machines is a basic requirement. There are many ways to achieve that. In this article, we talk about scp (secure copy command) that encrypts the transferred file and password so no one can snoop. With scp you don’t have to start an FTP session or log into the system.

The scp tool relies on SSH (Secure Shell) to transfer files, so all you need is the username and password for the source and target systems. Another advantage is that with SCP you can move files between two remote servers, from your local machine in addition to transferring data between local and remote machines. In that case you need usernames and passwords for both servers. Unlike Rsync, you don’t have to log into any of the servers to transfer data from one machine to another.

This tutorial is aimed at new Linux users, so I will keep things as simple as possible. Let’s get started.

Copy a single file from the local machine to a remote machine:

The scp command needs a source and destination to copy files from one location to another location. This is the pattern that we use:

scp localmachine/path_to_the_file username@server_ip:/path_to_remote_directory

In the following example I am copying a local file from my macOS system to my Linux server (Mac OS, being a UNIX operating system has native support for all UNIX/Linux tools).

scp /Volumes/MacDrive/Distros/fedora.iso 
swapnil@10.0.0.75:/media/prim_5/media_server/

Here, ‘swapnil’ is the user on the server and 10.0.0.75 is the server IP. It will ask you to provide the password for that user, and then copy the file securely.

I can do the same from my local Linux machine:

scp /home/swapnil/Downloads/fedora.iso swapnil@10.0.0.75:/media/prim_5/media_server/

If you are running Windows 10, then you can use Ubuntu bash on Windows to copy files from the Windows system to Linux server:

scp /mnt/c/Users/swapnil/Downloads/fedora.iso swapnil@10.0.0.75:/media/prim_5/
  media_server/

Copy a local directory to a remote server:

If you want to copy the entire local directory to the server, then you can add the -r flag to the command:

scp -r localmachine/path_to_the_directory username@server_ip:/path_to_remote_directory/

Make sure that the source directory doesn’t have a forward slash at the end of the path, at the same time the destination path *must* have a forward slash.

Copy all files in a local directory to a remote directory

What if you only want to copy all the files inside a local directory to a remote directory? It’s simply, just add a forward slash and * at the end of source directory and give the path of destination directory. Don’t forget to add the -r flag to the command:

scp -r localmachine/path_to_the_directory/* username@server_ip:/path_to_remote_directory/

Copying files from remote server to local machine

If you want to make a copy of a single file, a directory or all files on the server to the local machine, just follow the same example above, just exchange the place of source and destination.

Copy a single file:

scp username@server_ip:/path_to_remote_directory local_machine/path_to_the_file

Copy a remote directory to a local machine:

scp -r username@server_ip:/path_to_remote_directory local-machine/path_to_the_directory/

Make sure that the source directory doesn’t have a forward slash at the end of the path, at the same time the destination path *must* have a forward slash.

Copy all files in a remote directory to a local directory:

scp -r username@server_ip:/path_to_remote_directory/* local-machine/path_to_the_directory/

Copy files from one directory of the same server to another directory securely from local machine

Usually I ssh into that machine and then use rsync command to perform the job, but with SCP, I can do it easily without having to log into the remote server.

Copy a single file:

scp username@server_ip:/path_to_the_remote_file username@server_ip:/
  path_to_destination_directory/

Copy a directory from one location on remote server to different location on the same server:

scp username@server_ip:/path_to_the_remote_file username@server_ip:/
  path_to_destination_directory/

Copy all files in a remote directory to a local directory

scp -r username@server_ip:/path_to_source_directory/* usdername@server_ip:/
  path_to_the_destination_directory/

Copy files from one remote server to another remote server from a local machine

Currently I have to ssh into one server in order to use rsync command to copy files to another server. I can use SCP command to move files between two remote servers:

Usually I ssh into that machine and then use rsync command to perform the job, but with SCP, I can do it easily without having to log into the remote server.

Copy a single file:

scp username@server1_ip:/path_to_the_remote_file username@server2_ip:/
  path_to_destination_directory/

Copy a directory from one location on a remote server to different location on the same server:

scp username@server1_ip:/path_to_the_remote_file username@server2_ip:/
  path_to_destination_directory/

Copy all files in a remote directory to a local directory

scp -r username@server1_ip:/path_to_source_directory/* username@server2_ip:/
  path_to_the_destination_directory/

Conclusion

As you can see, once you understand how things work, it will be quite easy to move your files around. That’s what Linux is all about, just invest your time in understanding some basics, then it’s a breeze!

Ready to continue your Linux journey? Check out our free intro to Linux course!

You may ask yourself, what is the purpose of this article? Why convert a Windows file to adapt to a UNIX environment like Linux? Isn’t Linux all-powerful? The exceptional capabilities of the Linux operating system do not spare it from incompatible displays of files transferred from other computing platforms.

Just because you can open a file on a Linux environment does not imply that you have full control over how the file’s texts should be displayed.

[ You might also like: How to Find Files Containing Specific Text String in Linux ]

You will encounter instances where a file’s texts or words are jammed together on a single giant line. In other instances, the same file texts’ displays might not have line breaks or sentence spacing.

A common attribute of raw Windows files opened in UNIX systems like Linux is the unavoidable end-of-line display of ^M or Ctrl-M characters.

This article guide seeks to achieve one objective; the conversion of a Windows File to a UNIX file without changing the format of the resulting file.

Ways to Convert Windows File to Unix Format in Linux

We can achieve the objective of our article through several methods. These methods allow us to convert a Windows file to a UNIX file and still retain the original format of the Windows file.

Convert Windows File to Unix Using dos2unix Command

Depending on your Linux operating system distribution, you can install the dos2unix command-line tool from one of the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get install dos2unix     [On Debian, Ubuntu and Mint]
$ sudo yum install dos2unix         [On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux]
$ sudo emerge -a sys-apps/dos2unix  [On Gentoo Linux]
$ sudo pacman -S dos2unix           [On Arch Linux]
$ sudo zypper install dos2unix      [On OpenSUSE]    

The command syntax for using the dos2unix tool is as follows:

$ dos2unix Your_Windows_File Final_Unix_File

So if you have a sample file created on a Windows computing system and want to open it on a Linux computing system without compromising its format, you would use the following command.

$ dos2unix windows_readme.txt unix_readme.txt

Before we run the above command, we need to create a blank unix_readme.txt file that will accommodate the converted file.

$ touch unix_readme.txt
$ dos2unix windows_readme.txt unix_readme.txt    

As per the screen capture, your converted Windows file should comfortably adapt to any Unix environment.

Using AWK Command – Convert Windows File to Unix

The awk command is pre-installed on all modern full-fledged UNIX computing systems like Linux. To convert our sample Windows file, we would implement the awk command in the following manner:

$ awk '{ sub("r$", ""); print }' windows_readme.txt > new_unix_readme.txt

As you have noted, with the awk command, we don’t need a pre-existing blank Linux file to accommodate the converted Windows file. The command creates and populates the Unix file version of the Windows file on its own.

Using tr Command – Convert Windows File to Unix

If most of the Windows files you open on your Linux environment have unnecessary Ctrl-Z and carriage return characters, then you will appreciate what the tr command has to offer.

Supposing our sample Windows file is a victim of such characters, removing them will require implementing the following command:

$ tr -d '' < windows_readme.txt > polished_unix_readme.txt

The inbuilt nature of the tr command also generates the resulting UNIX file without the need for its pre-creation.

The flexibility of the three discussed approaches to converting any editable Windows file to UNIX file format should save you from the headaches of having to manually edit your downloaded or transferred Windows files to remove unwanted characters and spaces while on a Linux environment.