linuxexpert-practice-labs/labs/rhcsa/4-7-secure-file-transfer/README.md

RHCSA 4.7: Secure file transfer

Copying files to and from another machine with scp, rsync and sftp, keeping permissions and times.

Before you start

The peer, at 10.99.0.2 (name peer), stands in for the other VM. It runs its own sshd, and shares this VM's files and users, so your account there needs to be a different user to keep the copies apart: you are alice here, and bob on the peer.

The lab creates users alice and bob (password Lab-Pass-1). alice has an SSH key that logs in as bob@peer, a directory ~/proj with a few files (one of them mode 640, all dated January 2026), and a file ~/report.txt. Do the tasks as alice: sudo su - alice.

Tasks

1. Copy the directory ~/proj to bob's home directory on the peer (bob@peer:), keeping permissions and modification times.
2. Fetch /etc/os-release from the peer into a local directory ~/got.
3. Copy ~/proj/ to backup/ in bob's home on the peer with rsync, change one file in ~/proj, and copy again. The second run lists only the changed file.
4. Use sftp to upload ~/report.txt to /tmp on the peer, and download it again as ~/report-back.txt.

Hints

• scp -rp proj bob@peer:; ssh bob@peer ls -l proj.
• scp bob@peer:/etc/os-release ~/got/; the directory must exist.
• rsync -av proj/ bob@peer:backup/; the trailing slash copies the contents.
• sftp bob@peer, then put, get REMOTE LOCAL, bye.