description: Copy files among machines
keywords:
- machine, scp, subcommand
menu:
  main:
    parent: smn_machine_subcmds
title: scp
---

# scp

Copy files from your local host to a machine, from machine to machine, or from a
machine to your local host using `scp`.

The notation is `machinename:/path/to/files` for the arguments; in the host
machine's case, you don't have to specify the name, just the path.

Consider the following example:

    $ cat foo.txt
    cat: foo.txt: No such file or directory
    $ docker-machine ssh dev pwd
    /home/docker
    $ docker-machine ssh dev 'echo A file created remotely! >foo.txt'
    $ docker-machine scp dev:/home/docker/foo.txt .
    foo.txt                                                           100%   28     0.0KB/s   00:00
    $ cat foo.txt
    A file created remotely!

Just like how `scp` has a `-r` flag for copying files recursively,
`docker-machine` has a `-r` flag for this feature.

In the case of transferring files from machine to machine, they go through the
local host's filesystem first (using `scp`'s `-3` flag).
