Blockhill

SCP File Administration Ubuntu Linux

When I recently 'upgraded' my laptop by making the shift (back) to Linux after a long spell in Windows, I  was worried about the loss of my much used winSCP application.

winSCP is a graphical user interface (GUI) for working with remote and local files via SCP connections. SCP is an advanced, secure version of FTP based on the SSH protocol and allows for the copying of files between two computers. As a web developer working with a Linux hosting environment, winSCP is a very useful tool.

While there are sever 'replacements' for winSCP in Linux I wasn't all that happy with them. My next move was to try a plugin for the Eclipse environment (my code editor of choice). I played with a solution called Remote System Explorer but couldn't get it to function how I wanted and so gave up and moved on.

The solution that I settled on in the end turned out to be simple, clean and very effective. Using SSH file sharing I was able to mount an instance of my remote file system locally and then work with it as if it was right here on my hard drive.

Use this tutorial on how to get it all setup:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/how-to-mount-a-remote-folder-using-ssh-on-ubuntu/

An optional step is to add modify the context menu of Nautilus for quick access to commonly used commands such as TOUCH.

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions
nautilus-actions-config