SCP or SFTP?

hi to all,

i would like to ask if what implementation of an FTP server would be mostly recommended that which involves a higher form of security for both authentication and data transfers. those that use SCP or would SFTP be preferred?

also, if there is a guide or a "how-to" that you could point me to implement either would be very much appreciated.

i'm planning on implementing it on fc4

thanks....

In terms of security, both protocols operate over SSH although SCP operates mainly with SSH1 while SFTP operates mostly over SSH2 which is more secure. SFTP is also more more modern and fully featured. The following link from the WinSCP documentation pages gives a comparative guide. WinSCP is a brilliant WIndows GUI client for both SCP and SFTP which I use a lot.

OpenSSH (an SSH server which supports both SCP and SFTP) already comes with FC4 and most other Linux distros.

the maker of putty also offers a free command line SCP util (pscp)that works with both ssh versions 1 and 2.

hi to all,

thanks for those who replied and i have already used it setting up sftp as it is most secured using ssh-ver2. i am actually using both WinSCP and pscp from putty as my clients. thanks again.

Another client which I use is FileZilla . It is primarily an FTP client, but it supports SFTP as well. I use it mainly for my FTP needs, though.

I'd ask that anyone better informed on this correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me (and in my own use, I do it this way) that scp is good for a quick "need this file on another box" transfer, whereas if it's a consistant need to be moving stuff around, a fully-featured sftp server would be better.

Kind of like notepad can technically be used as an IDE and all, but if you're doing a lot of it, you move to something better. But, still, when you just need a quick edit, a small simple editor does the job fine.