How can I get the right local username and address for scp from remote to local?

Question

I'm on a Mac running Catalina. I have a file on a remote server that I want to do things with on my local machine; I want to do it so that I am moving from remote to local.

I looked at this post, this post, and many similar online resources and saw that I need to use my username and address, and then a filepath; what I am wondering is how I find these, and which I use? I have only seen "replace-with-your-info" templates, but not examples of what it should look like.

I am asking about this part

[email protected]:path/to/newRead.txt

, but with my information replaced with the generic info.

When I tried ifconfig, several blocks of phrases and numbers came up; which should I use (if any)? I also don't know how to find my username, nor what my path should look like (should the username be the full result of the hostname command, and the start of the path the result of printing the working directory from home (~)?)

Are there commands I can input into the command line that will give me these directly, or give me a formatted string of what my (local) specific part should look like?

I am asking for remote to local because my privileges on the remote are more limited, although I am open to hearing about similar things on that end as well.

Answer 1

So you want to copy something from a remote machine to your local mac? You can do this like so:

# from your local mac machine
$ scp <username>@<remote-hostname>:/path/to/thing/to/copy .
# or if its a directory
$ scp -r ...

This will copy the file to your current working directory (hence .)

To get the username and hostname of the remote machine, simply login and run whoami and hostname (assuming the remote machine is of linux flavor)

# e.g. 
$ ssh remote-hostname
$ hostname 
# prints machine hostname
$ whoami
# prints your username 

fwiw, assuming you already know how to ssh into this remote machine, then you already know what the hostname is for scp :)

Some extra info:

scp is nice to start with, but rsync might be a better choice depending on what types of copying/syncing work you are doing. E.g. you could try:

# from local mac
$ rsync -auvz <username>@<remote-hostname>:/path/to/folder/ .

rsync used like this will compress files before/after sending, and will take into account the variation between your local and remote folder structure, only updating what needs to be (so idempotent vs scp which is not)

Answer 2

I have a file on a remote server

So the remote server has a name, say remote.server.com, and you have an account on the remote server, say god. You know where the file on the remote server is, for example in under home directory of god in directory files with name myfile.

Then you, from your Mac,

scp [email protected]:files/myfile localfile

and it will copy the remote file as localfile to your Mac.

ifconfig will tell you exactly nothing about the remote server.

If you don't know your account name god on the remote server, then you don't have an account on the remote server. So then the first thing you need to do is get an account. How to do that depends on you you came to have a file on remote.server.com in the first place, which you didn't tell us anything about. Usually it involves asking whoever manages the remote server.

---

I'm (good faith) accessing a terminal through a passthru exploit, where I can see different directories and files through an input field meant to do something else on the site.

So it's a web server, and you don't have an account on the server, which means you cannot use scp. End of story.

If you are doing this in good faith, that means you should know who runs the server, so you can contact them to get an account.