could not resolve hostname with scp

Question

I am accessing an ubuntu server over ssh with putty on my windows machine and trying to download a single file to my local windows machine

my windows username is Mark and my hostname per cmd is Marks I am trying the following command on the remote server

scp backup.sql mark@marks:desktop

and I get could not resolve hostname I have tried to put in what I think myip address is and the connection times out

Answer 1

binarysubstrate is right about the syntax. The problem is, if the OP puts the name (or address) of his windows client in the 'to' part of the scp command, it probably won't work for a number of reasons:

1. his windows machine may not have a resolvable FQDN,
2. his windows machine may be behind a NAT firewall that is not setup to port-forward SSH requests,
3. he probably does not have an SSH daemon running on his windows machine.

To simply copy a file from the remote server down to a windows client, I would recommend WinSCP.

Answer 2

The syntax is this, relative to where you're issuing the command:

scp user@host_from:location/file user@host_to:location/file

And of course if you're local you can omit the user@host prefixes:

scp local_file me@host_to:~/local_file

The direction is always from > to relative to where you issue the command.

Answer 3

From the ser you ping your machine name ? Try replace machine name for the IP Address, or add your machine name to hosts configuration file from the server.