How do I find the local address on my mac so that I can scp?

Question

I am on another computer, but I want to scp some files over to my macbook pro. The command for this is:

scp -rp filename.txt user@path

How do I find the address/path of my mac? I tried

ifconfig

on my mac and a lot of descriptions popped up, including several numbers that could be IP addresses. However, I don't know how to interpret the data. Help?

Answer 1

The output of ifconfig gives the different interfaces your computer has. You might find several ip addresses, depending if you have both wired and/or wireless connections and/or other types. The interfaces are listed like enX (en1, en2.. etc) depending on the number of interfaces you got. For ipv4 address, look at the "inet:" part, usually something like 192.x.x.x., 83.x.x.x or something similar.

As an example,

ifconfig | grep inet

will result in the different inet(ipv4) addresses in your computer, for the different interfaces.

Answer 2

You were on the right track. When you use ifconfig on the far left you'll see a column with items like hi,lo,eth0,eth1,etc... These are the interfaces. Usually, the main interface is going to be eth0. Next to this should be a line which begins with inet addr:. The IP after that is your IP address. Use that to connect to that PC.