RCP(1) BSD General Commands Manual RCP(1)NAMErcp — remote file copy
SYNOPSISrcp [-46p] file1 file2
rcp [-46pr] file ... directory
DESCRIPTIONrcp copies files between machines. Each file or directory argument is
either a remote file name of the form “rname@rhost:path”, or a local file
name (containing no ‘:’ (colon) characters, or a ‘/’ (slash) before any
‘:’ (colon) characters).
The rhost can be an IPv4 or an IPv6 address string. Since IPv6 addresses
already contain ‘:’ (colon) characters, an IPv6 address string must be
enclosed between ‘[’ (left square bracket) and ‘]’ (right square bracket)
characters. Otherwise, the first occurrence of a ‘:’ (colon) character
would be interpreted as the separator between the rhost and the path.
For example,
[2001:DB8::800:200C:417A]:tmp/file
Options:
-4 Use IPv4 addresses only.
-6 Use IPv6 addresses only.
-p The -p option causes rcp to attempt to preserve (duplicate) in its
copies the modification times and modes of the source files, ignor‐
ing the umask. By default, the mode and owner of file2 are pre‐
served if it already existed; otherwise the mode of the source file
modified by the umask(2) on the destination host is used.
-r If any of the source files are directories, rcp copies each subtree
rooted at that name; in this case the destination must be a direc‐
tory.
If path is not a full path name, it is interpreted relative to the login
directory of the specified user ruser on rhost, or your current user name
if no other remote user name is specified. A path on a remote host may
be quoted (using \, ", or ´) so that the metacharacters are interpreted
remotely.
rcp does not prompt for passwords; it performs remote execution via
rsh(1), and requires the same authorization.
rcp handles third party copies, where neither source nor target files are
on the current machine.
SEE ALSOcp(1), ftp(1), rcmd(1), rlogin(1), rsh(1), rcmd(3), hosts.equiv(5),
rhosts(5), environ(7)HISTORY
The rcp utility appeared in 4.2BSD. The version of rcp described here
has been reimplemented with Kerberos in 4.3BSD-Reno.
BUGS
Doesn't detect all cases where the target of a copy might be a file in
cases where only a directory should be legal.
Is confused by any output generated by commands in a .login, .profile, or
.cshrc file on the remote host.
The destination user and hostname may have to be specified as
“rhost.rname” when the destination machine is running the 4.2BSD version
of rcp.
BSD March 8, 2005 BSD
