scp command to download a folder

SCP is an easy to use tool for downloading a file or folder, from command line. It is actually a powerful tool that is available in linux for file transfer from command line. We have to mention here also wget, but that is a different topic.

To start your download from comand line you only need a putty terminal and ssh access to source folder.

Example:

scp -r user@server.com:/remotePathToFolder /localPath

In case you have ssh access on remote server only on a specific port, you can specify it as:

scp -P portNumber -r user@server.com:/remotePathToFolder /localPath

Make sure to use the uppercase P for port, as shown in the man:

scp
usage: scp [-12346BCpqrv] [-c cipher] [-F ssh_config] [-i identity_file]
           [-l limit] [-o ssh_option] [-P port] [-S program]
           [[user@]host1:]file1 ... [[user@]host2:]file2