There are a wide variety of SFTP clients that will take care of all the actual commands for you, giving you a drag-and-drop interface similar to Windows. For Windows we suggest SecureFX. But SFTP is not difficult to use. In fact, if you're comfortable with Linux you'll find that you only need to learn a few extra commands.

To run SFTP from one of the SSCC Linux servers, type

> sftp server 

Where server should be replace by the name of the server you wish to connect to.

The SSCC maintains two FTP servers: ftp.ssc.wisc.edu connects to the Linux file system; ntftp.ssc.wisc.edu connects to the Windows network. In both cases once you log in your remote directory will start out as your home directory.

Duo MFA Required

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is required to access the Windows file server (ntftp.ssc.wisc.edu) and Linux server(ftp.ssc.wisc.edu) . If you are connected to the SSCC VPN or WiscVPN, you can connect to linstat.ssc.wisc.edu for sftp transfers without using Duo. If you are already using Duo for VPN or Silo access, you are already ready to go. If you are not, sign into this page with your SSCC credentials and set up Duo Mobile on your phone. If you do not want to use your phone for MFA, please contact the help desk. If you need to access ftp.ssc.wisc.edu from outside the US, please contact the help desk.

SFTP Commands

The following basic commands are probably all you'll need to use SFTP.

 cd  directory  

Changes the remote directory to the the directory you enter. Note that Windows servers will generally allow you to use the Linux style slash in path names (directory/subdirectory), but Linux servers will not allow you to use the Windows style backslash ( directory\subdirectory).

 lcd  directory  

Changes the local directory to the directory you enter.

 ls 

Lists the tables of the remote directory

 get  filename  

Copies a file from the remote directory to the local directory. Along with put, this is FTP's raison d'etre. Note that if you already have a file with the same name it will be overwritten without warning, so be careful!

 put  filename  

Copies a file from the local directory to the remote directory. The same warning applies.

 mget  filename  

Works like  get, except that you can use wildcards (*, etc.) to specify multiple files.

 mput  filename  

Works like put, except that you can use wildcards (*, etc.) to specify multiple files.

  help

Lists all the commands available in FTP, but doesn't explain them. Thus it's mostly useful as a reminder.

 quit 

Quits FTP (exit or logout won't work).