Recursive SCP not supported?

Question

After looking at Scp object, I see there are methods for transferring only one file at a time. There are no methods for transferring complete directories (recursively), even though the SCP supports this functionality.

Comments?

edit: added feature-request tag

Answer 1

I've added it into our list of possible future enhancements.

Vote either this question or this uservoice item up if it's important to you.

edit: added link to the uservoice.

edit: We are working on recursive SCP support and it will be added in the next public release.

EDIT: Recursive SCP is supported in Rebex SFTP build 4060 or later. This build was released in February 2011.

Comments

Martin, where is this list posted? I cannot find it in the Rebex's uservoice.

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@Stephen: Here it is http://rebex.uservoice.com/forums/18155-rebex-net-components/suggestions/628637-scp-method-for-transfering-complete-directories-?ref=title @other reader: feel free to upvote this Stephen Zebo's question as well.

Answer 2

Although the SCP protocol supports directory transfers we decided not to implement this feature due to multiple problems associated with it.

Since the SCP protocol has been superseded by the more comprehensive SFTP protocol, which also operates over an SSH session, we recommend to use the Sftp.PutFiles/GetFiles methods described at this batch transfer tutorial instead.

Comments

Lukas, This is wrong assumption. Many companies still use SCP because it doesn't expose as many features as SFTP and limits possible attacks surface.

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Actually, for SCP to work, the user has to be able to execute remote commands using SSH's remote execute functionality. Unless the server administrator explicitly denied executing any other commands than "scp", this can be (mis)used to execute arbitrary shell commands, adding many possible attack vectors. Most companies that still use SCP don't deny executing other commands because some SCP clients actually rely on them. For example, WinSCP requires the permission to execute other commands such as "ls" or "rm"(!) in addition to scp: http://winscp.net/eng/docs/requirements#scp_requirements