scp is a secure version of the old rcp tool, that uses ssh to prevent people from sniffing out what you're transferring. How you utilize this tool depends on whether you're using the same account name on both machines, or different account names. Otherwise, if you have your ssh set up properly, this is a pretty straightforward program.

To copy the file sample1 to the recipient host example2 using scp, from the account bob on the local machine to the account bob on the remote machine, you would type:

scp sample1 example2:

However, if you wanted to copy the same file from bob on the local machine to jane on the remote machine, you would need to use a user@host format, such as:

scp sample1 jane@example2:

I highly recommend that you leave some form of password challenge in place. If you bypass all password challenges, then suddenly you've made it simple for someone to break into other machines on your network once they've broken into this one. What I do is use scp but still require that the remote machine user account's login password be entered before the copy is completed.

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