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Comment by zitterbewegung | Hacker News Reader

If you want something in user land and you don't mind emacs there is TRAMP “Transparent Remote (file) Access, Multiple Protocol”. https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/

I use it a lot when I am accessing files from my server on my MacBook Pro .

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My favorite thing about using TRAMP is being able to cd to a directory on a remote system, and then cp a file either from my working directory to my local machine (or another remote!), or from my local machine to the current working directory.

Before I started using TRAMP, my flow for this was: SSH to a remote system, locate where I want to copy a file to with cd + ls, kill my SSH session, and then scp or rsync the file over, and then usually SSH back into the system.

> kill my SSH session, and then scp or rsync the file over, and then usually SSH back into the system.

Naive question: why the need to kill the ssh session? Can't you just open another terminal window or tab (or tmux/screen tab if that's part of your workflow)

I usually type ~ followed by ^Z to suspend the session for a quick scp operation, then resume with "fg".

Or just scp from the server, inside the same SSH session. scp works both ways.

That's also a way to do it. I prefer TRAMP over both ways though.

Not the GP, but I assume it's just because the ssh swssion is no longer needed -- it was only required to locate the file.

> and then usually SSH back into the system.

TRAMP is amazing. Whenever I need to edit configuration files or code on a remote server, I get to keep the exact same Emacs setup as if I were doing things locally. There are noticeable delays in opening and saving files on slow connections, but it's good enough that I can't remember the last time I have used nano or vi in a remote server.

Couldn't you use zmodem or something?

I am not familiar with zmodem, but maybe.

Couldn't you just use sftp?

Yes. I've never directly used sftp before, but checking the man page it does seem like it would fit the flow I described well.

Idk when you stopped using scp, but scp has been deprecated, and at least w/openssh, using sftp under the hood for years now. You probably have used it if you've scp'd since 2020.

My point above was that I was making and killing multiple SSH connections to find where I want to copy a file, and then do the copy. Using SCP with an SFTP backend would still do that.

FWIW a lot (most?, all?) of Emacs features work transparently with Tramp, including dired, eshell, and magit.

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