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How to Securely Copy Files Between Machines: Using sftp

sftp is a secure replacement for ftp. For the reasons why this security is needed, see the scp qref.

If you are on a unix machine, sftp should be right there at your fingertips. Just use sftp the way you would normally use ftp and you are on your way.

If, on the other hand, you are on a Windows machine, a good sftp client can be hard to find. My recommendation is that you use Mindterm's sftp bridge feature. Mindterm will set up a "bridge" on your local machine, so that connecting via ftp to localhost on your machine will be equivalent to connecting via sftp to turing. Mindterm will take care of all the encryption and protocol translation. To use this feature, first use Mindterm to connect to turing, then go to File->ftp to sftp bridge. In the resulting dialog, click on Enable bridge. Voila! You can now fire up your favorite ftp client and connect anonymously to localhost, and you'll have direct file access to turing.


Copyright (c) HMC Computer Science Department. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License.''

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Last Modified Wednesday, 25-Jul-2001 16:16:55 PDT