Force Sequential Output with SCP?

November 9th, 2024
tech
In my bioinformatics work I often stream files between linux hosts and Amazon S3. This could look like:

$ scp host:/path/to/file /dev/stdout | \
    aws s3 cp - s3://bucket/path/to/file

This recently stopped working after upgrading:

ftruncate "/dev/stdout": Invalid argument
Couldn't write to "/dev/stdout": Illegal seek

I think I figured out why this is happening:

With scp I can give the -O flag:

Use the legacy SCP protocol for file transfers instead of the SFTP protocol. Forcing the use of the SCP protocol may be necessary for servers that do not implement SFTP, for backwards-compatibility for particular filename wildcard patterns and for expanding paths with a '~' prefix for older SFTP servers.

This does work, but it doesn't seem ideal: probably servers will drop support for the SCP protocol at some point? I've filed a bug with OpenSSH.


[1] "man scp" gives me: "Since OpenSSH 8.8 (8.7 in Red Hat/Fedora builds), scp has used the SFTP protocol for transfers by default."

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

The joys of cash benchmarking

when to just give people money

via Thing of Things February 27, 2026

2025-26 New Year review

This is an annual post reviewing the last year and setting intentions for next year. I look over different life areas (work, health, parenting, effectiveness, etc) and analyze my life tracking data. Highlights include a minimal group house, the usefulness…

via Victoria Krakovna January 19, 2026

Why I Don't Think My Braces Were Worth It

A couple weeks ago, I got my braces off. I kind of wish I had never had them, though. When I was younger, two of my teeth were sticking out, and they looked kind of funny. I thought that my teeth were just fine, and I didn't want to get braces. But s…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts January 3, 2026

more     (via openring)