Hello,

I'm sorry if this sounds like a very simple question, but I'm having some difficulty with it being a complete newbie to UNIx. I use Windows, and always have, but need some UNIX access for work, picking up files from our group space, etc.

Basically, I'm using Cygwin and can SSH into the server using my username and password, and can see the files on there. what I'm not sure of is how to copy files from outside the server, i.e from my laptop.

On windows you would simply do something like copy:
12.34.56.78/C/Docs/myfile.txt to 87.65.43.21/myfile.txt.

But with UNIx, and by proxy cygwin, using the whole idea of a home directory, I'm really not sure how the command would be written, or how the directories would work. Also, how do I write a location that is outside the server when in the server directory structure?

I hope this makes sense, and any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

Hussein.

Helo.
This is the scenario: You are working on yout laptop which runs Windows with cygwin. Then, from your cygwin bash shell:
- Transfer file from your laptop to the UNIX server:
Have a look at this thread: http://www.unix.com/showthread.php?t...hlight=tar+ssh
- Tansfer files from the UNIX server to your laptop:
ssh user@unix_server tar cvf - /whatever | tar xvf -
have a look to ssh/tar manpages for more options.

Alternatively you could use either "sftp" or "scp" commands.

Regards.

Hi thanks for the link and I do appreciate it.

Part of the problem is that I don't seem to have the man feature on my cygwin setup - when I type command man I just get an error saying it couldn't be found.

Anyway, for the file transfer, I'm still confused. I'm thinking I need to wrap the files into an archive first, right? And then transfer?

but I'm not sure about the actual command syntax to do the transfer. From my laptop to the server would be easy, as I'm already in the directory I want to transfer from, but...

when I log into the server, and then do a pwd, I get /home/student/cs/username/ and this is my home directory.

I have a username and password to log into my part of the server. that logs me into the directory referenced above.

I usually ssh with ssh -l username server.csd.uni.ac.uk and then it asks me for the password.

So would I be transferring to the full path on the server, presumably server.csd.uni.ac.uk/home/student/cs/username, or would I be going to just the server, and then somehow using the login to map to the directory?

When transferring to the laptop, would I use the IP address as the pointer to the laptop, and then what path do I use to the home directory for cygwin? I'm guessing it wouldn't be C:\cygwin\home\H as this is Windows speak.

sorry, but as I said, total newbie to this and I've pretty much only got to gripswith the bear minimum I need to function, which is handling files on the server itself, but now I want to be able to take work home with me and upload it back when I've worked on it.

Thanks for your patience and for bearing with me.

Hussein.

You should install and use it. Though, perhaps you only have to configure the MANPATH variable...

No, you don't need to do that. That's just a way to transfer a bunch of files...
As you are using ssh, you will (by default) be tranferring to your home directory, though you can change to wherever you want/can.
Cygwin is, basically, a UNIX environment fot windows. You should use UNIX paths as if you were logged on a UNIX server. But Cygwin is not an emulator, so you will be using your real NTFS File System. In my case, my home directory from the point of view of cygwin is "/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/grial", but for windows, it's "C:\Documents and Settings\grial"
Finally, to understand those commands, you will need to understand the use of pipes. Just as an introdunction, if yoy have this command:

command1 | command2

Then, command1 oputput will be redirected to command2 input.

Regards.