Copying Directory Between Computers with Gateway Server

grescheks · 11-09-2009, 03:01 PM

So I've recently begun working on a project where the files are stored on a computer at another university. I'd like to be able to copy directory where the files I'm using are located from the Linux computer where they're stored to my Windows Computer. I'm using Cygwin to connect between the computers. The problem I'm having is that, in order to connect to the other computer, there is a gateway server that must be connected to first, then from there I can ssh to another computer in the network to access the directory.

My login process is something like this:

ssh username@gw.destin[/email]ation
password

ssh username@computer1.destin[/email]ation
password

I've tried to copy the files, but I keep running into problems. For example, I tried to sftp from my computer, but I can't get past the gateway (when the password prompt comes up, I get an "unexpected newline" error), and I've tried the cp function from the source directory,

cp -r /sourcedirectory/ user@mycomputer:/cygdrive/destinationdirectory/

but I can't get it to copy over to my computer (it tells me that the destination directory doesn't exist).

Am I missing something simple? Can anyone think of something I could try to get these files to copy?

Thanks to whoever answers!

janoszen · 11-09-2009, 03:32 PM

It would be much simpler if you did a forward / reverse port forward on your gateway.

chrism01 · 11-09-2009, 05:18 PM

If setting up port fwd is not possible, just scp from computer1 to gateway, then scp gateway to wkstn.

evo2 · 11-09-2009, 05:37 PM

I don't use windows or cygwin, so I'm making assumptions about how unixy a setup it provides you with. In a real *nix machine the following should work.

First open a tunnel from port 6666 on your own machine, pointing to port 6666 on the gateway machine. This will also give you a shell on the gateway machine. Then using this shell forward port 6666 on the gateway machine to port 22 (ssh) on "computer1" (where the files are).

Code:

windoze% ssh -L6666:localhost:6666 username@gw.dest
gw.dest% ssh -L 6666:localhost:22 username@computer1.dest
computer1.dest

Now in a 2nd terminal on your own machine you can get directly to "computer1" (machine behind gateway) by sshing to port 6666 on the localhost (your ownmachine). In this context "localhost:6666" can be thought of as the ssh server on the machine behind the gateway.

Code:

windoze% scp -r localhost:6666/path/to/directory/on/computer1 .

Cheers,

Evo2.