How to scp in Python?

What's the most pythonic way to scp a file in Python? The only route I'm aware of is

os.system('scp "%s" "%s:%s"' % (localfile, remotehost, remotefile) ) 

which is a hack, and which doesn't work outside Linux-like systems, and which needs help from the Pexpect module to avoid password prompts unless you already have passwordless SSH set up to the remote host.

I'm aware of Twisted's conch, but I'd prefer to avoid implementing scp myself via low-level ssh modules.

I'm aware of paramiko, a Python module that supports SSH and SFTP; but it doesn't support SCP.

Background: I'm connecting to a router which doesn't support SFTP but does support SSH/SCP, so SFTP isn't an option.

EDIT: This is a duplicate of How to copy a file to a remote server in Python using SCP or SSH?. However, that question doesn't give an scp-specific answer that deals with keys from within Python. I'm hoping for a way to run code kind of like

import scp client = scp.Client(host=host, user=user, keyfile=keyfile) # or client = scp.Client(host=host, user=user) client.use_system_keys() # or client = scp.Client(host=host, user=user, password=password) # and then client.transfer('/etc/local/filename', '/etc/remote/filename') 

13 Answers

Try the Python scp module for Paramiko. It's very easy to use. See the following example:

import paramiko from scp import SCPClient def createSSHClient(server, port, user, password): client = paramiko.SSHClient() client.load_system_host_keys() client.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy()) client.connect(server, port, user, password) return client ssh = createSSHClient(server, port, user, password) scp = SCPClient(ssh.get_transport()) 

Then call scp.get() or scp.put() to do SCP operations.

(SCPClient code)

You might be interested in trying Pexpect (source code). This would allow you to deal with interactive prompts for your password.

Here's a snip of example usage (for ftp) from the main website:

# This connects to the openbsd ftp site and # downloads the recursive directory listing. import pexpect child = pexpect.spawn ('ftp ftp.openbsd.org') child.expect ('Name .*: ') child.sendline ('anonymous') child.expect ('Password:') child.sendline ('') child.expect ('ftp> ') child.sendline ('cd pub') child.expect('ftp> ') child.sendline ('get ls-lR.gz') child.expect('ftp> ') child.sendline ('bye') 

Couldn't find a straight answer, and this "scp.Client" module doesn't exist. Instead, this suits me:

from paramiko import SSHClient from scp import SCPClient ssh = SSHClient() ssh.load_system_host_keys() ssh.connect('example.com') with SCPClient(ssh.get_transport()) as scp: scp.put('test.txt', 'test2.txt') scp.get('test2.txt') 

You could also check out paramiko. There's no scp module (yet), but it fully supports sftp.

[EDIT] Sorry, missed the line where you mentioned paramiko. The following module is simply an implementation of the scp protocol for paramiko. If you don't want to use paramiko or conch (the only ssh implementations I know of for python), you could rework this to run over a regular ssh session using pipes.

scp.py for paramiko

if you install putty on win32 you get an pscp (putty scp).

so you can use the os.system hack on win32 too.

(and you can use the putty-agent for key-managment)

sorry it is only a hack (but you can wrap it in a python class)

As of today, the best solution is probably AsyncSSH

async with asyncssh.connect('host.tld') as conn: await asyncssh.scp((conn, 'example.txt'), '.', recurse=True) 

You can use the package subprocess and the command call to use the scp command from the shell.

from subprocess import call cmd = "scp user1@host1:files user2@host2:files" call(cmd.split(" ")) 

Have a look at fabric.transfer.

from fabric import Connection with Connection(host="hostname", user="admin", connect_kwargs={"key_filename": "/home/myuser/.ssh/private.key"} ) as c: c.get('/foo/bar/file.txt', '/tmp/') 

import paramiko client = paramiko.SSHClient() client.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy()) client.connect('<IP Address>', username='<User Name>',password='' ,key_filename='<.PEM File path') #Setup sftp connection and transmit this script print ("copying") sftp = client.open_sftp() sftp.put(<Source>, <Destination>) sftp.close() 

It has been quite a while since this question was asked, and in the meantime, another library that can handle this has cropped up: You can use the copy function included in the Plumbum library:

import plumbum r = plumbum.machines.SshMachine("example.net") # this will use your ssh config as `ssh` from shell # depending on your config, you might also need additional # params, eg: `user="username", keyfile=".ssh/some_key"` fro = plumbum.local.path("some_file") to = r.path("/path/to/destination/") plumbum.path.utils.copy(fro, to) 

If you are on *nix you can use sshpass

sshpass -p password scp -o User=username -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no src dst:/path 

Hmmm, perhaps another option would be to use something like sshfs (there an sshfs for Mac too). Once your router is mounted you can just copy the files outright. I'm not sure if that works for your particular application but it's a nice solution to keep handy.

I while ago I put together a python SCP copy script that depends on paramiko. It includes code to handle connections with a private key or SSH key agent with a fallback to password authentication.