Is it possible to copy a directory from a Google Compute Engine instance to my local machine?

Question

With scp I can add the -r flag to download directories to my local machine via ssh.

When using:

gcloud compute scp -r

it sais that '-r' is not an available option. Without -r I get an error saying that my source path is a directory. (Implying I can only download single files.)

Is there an equivalent to -r flag for gcloud compute scp command?

ThatBrianDude · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-21T10:36:23.353

50

Found it!

GCE offers an equivalent and it is --recurse.

My final command looks like this:

gcloud compute scp --recurse username@instance_name:./* "local_dir"

For some reason I also needed the * behind the source folder to avoid some security issue.

edited Sep 21 '17 at 10:36

answered Sep 21 '17 at 10:31

ThatBrianDude

2,952
3
16
42

2

make sure not to have a space after the `instance_name:`, that got me for a few minutes... – Brett Apr 06 '18 at 17:39
I have an app engine. I open the cloud shell. I want to copy a file from the cloud shell to my local machine. Any idea on how to do this? Since I dont have a VM – james Oct 17 '18 at 09:58
@james Did you figure out how to do this for app engine? – Nathan majicvr.com Jan 26 '20 at 13:12
@frank yes i did – james Jan 27 '20 at 14:21
@james Oops, I meant "can you post the exact command so the community has it here?" – Nathan majicvr.com Jan 27 '20 at 16:12
@frank I used above command. e.g. gcloud compute scp --recurse ./* . here is another example # Copy all files and directories recursively from server to the current system's /tmp folder. scp -r server:/var/www /tmp – james Feb 03 '20 at 10:15

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 21 '20 at 23:29

0

Your gutils already has the right credentials, so just simply do

gcloud compute scp --recurse [the_instance_name]:[the_path_on_gcp_instance_folder] [the_path_on_your_machine]

answered Feb 21 '20 at 23:29

Areza

5,623
7
48
79

Is it possible to copy a directory from a Google Compute Engine instance to my local machine?

2 Answers2

Linked