Could someone explain the "scp" bash command for ftping files?

Question

I've been trying to learn how to ftp through the command line.

I've tried these but am having some minor issues:

$ cd path/to/parent/of/local_directory
$ scp -r local_directory username@74.212.212.222:/absolute/path/to/remote_directory

This seems to get the files up there, but it's dumping the local_directory into the remote_directory.

ie:

$ ssh username@domain.com    // assuming you signed it alright
$ cd path/to/remote_directory
$ ls
./ ../ index.html local_directory

I don't want to dump the directory in there, I want to update the files & directories inside the remote_directory. How do I get this to work correctly? I believe it has something to do with the /'s after the directory names but I'm not quite sure which should go where.

Answer 1

You're telling it to copy the directory. If you just want to copy the files, add /* to the source param:

scp -r local_directory/* username@74.212.212.222:/absolute/path/to/remote_directory
# Here ---------------^^

Answer 2

With that you are copying the folder, what you need to copy are the folder contents, have you tried this?

scp -r local_directory/* username@74.212.212.222:/absolute/path/to/remote_directory

Answer 3

scp works like the cp command. The correct scp command would be :

scp -r local_directory/* username@74.212.212.222:/absolute/path/to/remote_directory

This copies the local_directory content into the /absolute/path/to/remote_directory