rsync

rsync is basically like cp, but it can seamlessly copy files/directories between local and remote machines. It’s called rsync because it can keep filesystems in a remote machine in sync with the local one.

Here’s the basic usage. Just like cp, the source comes before the destination:

# Copying `/foo/bar` on this machine over to `/baz/qux` on a remote machine.
rsync -avz /foo/bar username@address:/baz/qux

• The username@address is the same thing you’d use to ssh into that machine. E.g. ssh root@149.12.173.1.
• -avz uses the archive, verbose and compress (zipped) flags. This means the copy preserves file attributes like permissions, shows detailed info about the transfer, and compresses files for faster network transfer.