Using SCP or SFTP with my ssh config file?

Question

Perhaps my google-foo is failing me here… I’d like to connect and upload a mysql dump file via terminal using SFTP or SCP to my remote server using my ssh config file. According to documentation I’ve found, I should be able to do this:

sftp -F db.sql.gz webost@staging2.example.com /tmp

I have also tired the alias in my config:

sftp -F db.sql.gz myalias /tmp

When I do the two above, I simply get a print out of possible commands, -F being one of them.

I can already connect via ssh using the shortcut in my local config just fine so I know that works:

ssh myalias

**Note: I am connecting using a private / public key pair so I never need to enter a password. The key pair does have a passphrase associated with it but OS X Keychain remembered that the first time I connected.

… so I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

Answer

1. From the help text: “... [-F ssh_config] ...“

   According to the above, -F expects one argument: path to an OpenSSH configuration file, ~/.ssh/config or similar. But you are giving it a gzipped SQL dump instead.

   Since plain ssh myalias is already working, you don’t even need the -F option here. Just sftp myalias would connect to the server.

2. However, the OpenSSH sftp client does not support uploading files like you are trying to; it can only download files (using the syntax host:path) or work in interactive mode. For uploading, you need to use scp:

   scp db.sql.gz myalias:/tmp
   

   or

   scp db.sql.gz webost@staging2.example.com:/tmp
   

(sftp does have a batch mode in which it can read commands from a file, using -b, but it is simpler to use scp for single uploads.)

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