scp copy has error "ambiguous target"

Question

I try to copy files from a linux (ubuntu) machine to an external hard drive mounted on a mac but got an error message :

scp: ambiguous target

What I did is, I'm on a mac, ssh to the linux machine where files are. Then use the following command :

scp fileToCopy myMacUser@myMacMachine:/Volumes/MyExternalDrive/targetDirectory

What did I do wrong ? What is the good command to use in this case ?

Happened to me when I had an extra param (`-t`; a remnant from a previous `ssh` command) in the arg list; apparently it is not supported by `scp` but the error I got was `ambiguous target` :( — Janaka Bandara, Sep 12 '18 at 11:11

score 136 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 10 '18 at 18:52

136

If you have white space in a path, you have to escape the characters by using double backslashes \\ and enclosing the entire path in quotes:

scp myfile.txt [email protected]:"/file\\ path\\ with\\ spaces/myfile.txt"

edited Jun 10 '18 at 18:52

Iulian Onofrei

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answered Jan 07 '16 at 09:27

Atnaize

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yes, that is it ! I first tried with double \\ but didn't work and then I tried adding " " around my path with \\. That does the job. Thanks. – bob Jan 07 '16 at 09:33
I have to look this up every time! the error message should say you have to escape spaces 3 times... – codenamejames May 08 '18 at 02:10
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Wrapping the remote path in quotes was key for me – sam452 Jul 23 '18 at 19:45
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Single quotes and single backslashes works just as well. – andrew lorien Nov 19 '18 at 07:44
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Triple backslashes without quotes works also. – pizzapants184 Dec 17 '18 at 20:49
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Double quotes in single qoutes without escaping spaces also work (`scp myfile.txt [email protected]:'"/file path with spaces/myfile.txt"'`). In fact you must escape the filename twice: first time from the local shell, and second time from the remote one. – mik Jul 19 '19 at 14:00
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Per @sam452 key is to wrap ONLY THE REMOTE TARGET in quotes. Wrapping the local file kept giving me "no such file or directory" errors – JoelAZ Oct 24 '19 at 00:53
You can also single-escape the whitespace and use single quotes, like `scp file.txt remotehost:'/dir\ with\ spaces'` – ACK_stoverflow Feb 07 '21 at 19:40

score 18 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 18 '20 at 00:43

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I found that two sets of quotes worked for me, around the target location. Double quotes outside, and single quotes inside the double quotes. For example:

scp "my local file.txt" [email protected]:"'/folder/my spacey folder name/'"

The outside set of quotes are for the local shell, and the inside quotes are for the remote shell. Thanks to @mik for the suggestion in comments.

answered Feb 18 '20 at 00:43

kristianp

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I used this in a script, that accepts a folder to recursively copy, like so: `scp -r "$*" SOME_HOST:"'$*'"` – Brad Parks Jul 29 '21 at 11:35
This is much nicer than escaping spaces. Thank you! – n8jadams Dec 03 '22 at 17:18

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 10 '19 at 15:37

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You need to put quotes so that spaces won't be misinterpreted. Instead of doing scp file Server:/folder\ location/ you should do scp file "Server:/folder\ location/"

answered Sep 10 '19 at 15:37

Code42

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scp copy has error "ambiguous target"

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