---
title: "SFTP"
description: "SFTP"
date: "2017-02-01"
---

<i class="fa fa-server"></i> SFTP
----------------------------------------

SFTP is the [Secure (or SSH) File Transfer
Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol).

SFTP runs over SSH v2 and is installed as standard with most modern
SSH installations.

Paths are specified as `remote:path`. If the path does not begin with
a `/` it is relative to the home directory of the user.  An empty path
`remote:` refers to the user's home directory.

Note that some SFTP servers will need the leading `/` - Synology is a
good example of this.

Here is an example of making an SFTP configuration.  First run

    rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process.

```
No remotes found - make a new one
n) New remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config
n/s/q> n
name> remote
Type of storage to configure.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
 1 / Amazon Drive
   \ "amazon cloud drive"
 2 / Amazon S3 (also Dreamhost, Ceph, Minio)
   \ "s3"
 3 / Backblaze B2
   \ "b2"
 4 / Dropbox
   \ "dropbox"
 5 / Encrypt/Decrypt a remote
   \ "crypt"
 6 / FTP Connection
   \ "ftp"
 7 / Google Cloud Storage (this is not Google Drive)
   \ "google cloud storage"
 8 / Google Drive
   \ "drive"
 9 / Hubic
   \ "hubic"
10 / Local Disk
   \ "local"
11 / Microsoft OneDrive
   \ "onedrive"
12 / Openstack Swift (Rackspace Cloud Files, Memset Memstore, OVH)
   \ "swift"
13 / SSH/SFTP Connection
   \ "sftp"
14 / Yandex Disk
   \ "yandex"
15 / http Connection
   \ "http"
Storage> sftp
SSH host to connect to
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
 1 / Connect to example.com
   \ "example.com"
host> example.com
SSH username, leave blank for current username, ncw
user> sftpuser
SSH port, leave blank to use default (22)
port> 
SSH password, leave blank to use ssh-agent.
y) Yes type in my own password
g) Generate random password
n) No leave this optional password blank
y/g/n> n
Path to unencrypted PEM-encoded private key file, leave blank to use ssh-agent.
key_file> 
Remote config
--------------------
[remote]
host = example.com
user = sftpuser
port = 
pass = 
key_file = 
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y
```

This remote is called `remote` and can now be used like this:

See all directories in the home directory

    rclone lsd remote:

Make a new directory

    rclone mkdir remote:path/to/directory

List the contents of a directory

    rclone ls remote:path/to/directory

Sync `/home/local/directory` to the remote directory, deleting any
excess files in the directory.

    rclone sync /home/local/directory remote:directory

### SSH Authentication ###

The SFTP remote supports three authentication methods:

  * Password
  * Key file
  * ssh-agent

Key files should be unencrypted PEM-encoded private key files.  For
instance `/home/$USER/.ssh/id_rsa`.

If you don't specify `pass` or `key_file` then rclone will attempt to
contact an ssh-agent.

If you set the `--sftp-ask-password` option, rclone will prompt for a
password when needed and no password has been configured.

### ssh-agent on macOS ###

Note that there seem to be various problems with using an ssh-agent on
macOS due to recent changes in the OS.  The most effective work-around
seems to be to start an ssh-agent in each session, eg

    eval `ssh-agent -s` && ssh-add -A

And then at the end of the session

    eval `ssh-agent -k`

These commands can be used in scripts of course.

### Specific options ###

Here are the command line options specific to this remote.

#### --sftp-ask-password ####

Ask for the SFTP password if needed when no password has been configured.

### Modified time ###

Modified times are stored on the server to 1 second precision.

Modified times are used in syncing and are fully supported.

Some SFTP servers disable setting/modifying the file modification time after
upload (for example, certain configurations of ProFTPd with mod_sftp). If you
are using one of these servers, you can set the option `set_modtime = false` in
your RClone backend configuration to disable this behaviour.

### Limitations ###

SFTP supports checksums if the same login has shell access and `md5sum`
or `sha1sum` as well as `echo` are in the remote's PATH.
This remote checksumming (file hashing) is recommended and enabled by default.
Disabling the checksumming may be required if you are connecting to SFTP servers
which are not under your control, and to which the execution of remote commands
is prohibited.  Set the configuration option `disable_hashcheck` to `true` to
disable checksumming.

Note that some SFTP servers (eg Synology) the paths are different for
SSH and SFTP so the hashes can't be calculated properly.  For them
using `disable_hashcheck` is a good idea.

The only ssh agent supported under Windows is Putty's pageant.

The Go SSH library disables the use of the aes128-cbc cipher by
default, due to security concerns. This can be re-enabled on a
per-connection basis by setting the `use_insecure_cipher` setting in
the configuration file to `true`. Further details on the insecurity of
this cipher can be found [in this paper]
(http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/~kp/SandPfinal.pdf).

SFTP isn't supported under plan9 until [this
issue](https://github.com/pkg/sftp/issues/156) is fixed.

Note that since SFTP isn't HTTP based the following flags don't work
with it: `--dump-headers`, `--dump-bodies`, `--dump-auth`

Note that `--timeout` isn't supported (but `--contimeout` is).
