SCP access - scp command not found

Troubleshooting
1

Creating a bug report/issue

Required Information

  • DietPi version 8
  • Distro version bullseye 1
  • SBC model RPi B (armv6l)
  • Power supply used - official pi
  • SD card used SanDisk ultra

Additional Information (if applicable)

  • Was the software title installed - freshly installed
  • Can this issue be replicated on a fresh installation of DietPi? - not tried

Steps to reproduce

  1. When trying to copy over a config file to a Linux machine with:
    scp dietpi@localip:/home/dietpi/configs/config_1.conf .
    the reply is:
    bash: line 1: scp: command not found
  • similar with user root
  • ssh access works OK

Expected behaviour

File transferring…

Actual behaviour

Either scp is not installed, or something else is blocking transfer

Extra details

Newly installed. Have not come across this before: scp failing while ssh works

2

Did you install the OpenSSH Cleint package (ID 0)?

If not just do

dietpi-software install 0
2 Likes
3

Thanks:
apt install ssh-client
worked

4

Btw, I strongly recommend to use SFTP instead of SCP. The latter is about to be deprecated, is not developed anymore.

1 Like
5

Wow - I had not heard that news before, I see the reasons here: Deprecating scp [LWN.net]
Thanks for the info!

1 Like
6

@MichaIng
in this case we would need to adjust our online docs and remove information on SCP and give some information on how to setup SFTP SSH Server Choices - DietPi.com Docs

7

It’s fine to keep mentioning that OpenSSH supports SFTP as well as SCP. WinSCP btw uses SFTP by default already, same as PuTTY’s pscp. What we should add is a tab to Dropbear docs about how to install the SFTP server. Optionally how to make it work with Green End SFTP Server. Since it installs to a different executable path, it is not found OOTB. WinSCP can be configured to use any path for it’s SFTP requests, but to make it work OOTB easiest is to symlink it to the default OpenSSH SFTP server binary location.

2 Likes
8

One more note: I read the Depecating scp article’s comments and I am adopting this pactice: to bypass scp and sftp by simply using rsync.

alias scp=rsync

Works perfectly on my first try! I’m sure I’ll find something wrong eventually from my scp expectations, but gaining the rich features of rsync (compression, summary, excludes, etc.) is a win in my book. No need to add SFTP to DietPi by switching from Dropbear to OpenSSH or adding GESFTPServer.

1 Like
9

thx for sharing your way around :slight_smile: