Generally, when we work in a secure environment we do have bastion host to connect application/DB server.

So when using Windows we can copy the file to a desktop from a remote server using the very nice tool called WinSCP. But on Mac, if we want to do it quickly without tool we can do it using below commands.

1. Create an ssh tunnel

ssh -L <your_machine_free_port>:<remote_server_ip>:22 <bastion_server_user>@<bastion_server_ip> cat -

<your_machine_free_port> – Select any free port between 1024 and 32768

<remote_server_ip> – Server from where the file has to be copied

<bastion_server_user> – User name for bastion server

<bastion_server_ip> – Bastion server IP/DNS

“cat -” – To keep the connection

       2. Copy (scp) a file

scp -i <ssh_key_if_any> -P <your_machine_free_port> <remote_server_user>@127.0.0.1:/file/path/to/copy .

If remote server needs an ssh key to connect, then pass the key with “-i” option or just ignore it.