Obtaining and Using PSCP at the NBER

PSCP is a freeware SCP (Secure CoPy) program for the Windows command line processor. You can use this program instead of FTP for copying files to or from the Unix servers at the NBER offices. FTP is not allowed from clients outside nber.org to servers inside the firewall because FTP leaves passwords in plain-text and vulnerable to eavesdropping. PSCP should work with any host supporting SSH, not just at NBER.

This is an alternative to using the http based facility at http://users.nber.org/~userid or http://users.nber.org/upload.

Details:

• Download PSCP here.
• Save pscp.exe somewhere on your hard drive. C:\windows\ is a good location in the default execution path.
• The command line syntax is:
  
  
  • pscp [options] [user@]host:source target
    
  • pscp [options] source [source...] [user@]host:target
    
    Options:
    -p preserve file attributes
    -q quiet, don't show statistics
    -r copy directories recursively
    -v show verbose messages
    -P port connect to specified port
    -pw passw login with specified password
    
    source or target may be a pathname or a ~userid/filename (on the Unix side). You will be prompted for the password of `user'. This is an old-fashioned command line program - you need to open a DOS window to run it.

Copying files from your UNIX host to your Windows PC.

• In order to copy a file from your UNIX host to your Windows PC your command line would look like this:
  
  
  • pscp username@yourhost:file.foo c:\temp\file.foo
    
    
  • This command line copies "file.foo" located in your home directory on your UNIX host to the temp directory on your C:\ drive.

Copying files from your Windows PC to our UNIX host.

• In order to copy a file from your Windows PC to your our Unix host your command line would look like this:
  
  
  • pscp -v c:\"my documents"\file.foo username@nber.org:file.foo
    
    
  • This command line copies "file.foo" located in the "my documents" directory on your C:\ drive to your home directory on our Unix cluster.
  • Remember: Backslashes (\) for your DOS and Windows files and forward slashes (/) for your UNIX files.

For more on PSCP see the PuTTY homepage.