How to upload local file to server through Linux terminal

Sure. Use scp (secure copy) like this:

scp [source file] [username]@[destination server]:.

Of course replace the bracketed [source file], [username] and [destination server] to match your local settings. So if the file was cool_stuff.txt and your username on the remote sever is sanjeev and the destination sever is example.com, the command would be:

scp cool_stuff.txt [email protected]:.

And the source could also be remote so you could do this to do the opposite of the above example:

scp [email protected]:cool_stuff.txt .

That command would copy the remote file cool_stuff.txt to whatever local directory you are in. And if you are doing this with multiple files, just use a wildcard (*) like you would for a normal cp command.

Also, the . just indicates the immediate directory path; such as the one you are in right at the moment you run the command or the immediate path that the remote user on the destination server has. But you could also specify a path like /this/path/right/here in the local to remote example:

scp cool_stuff.txt [email protected]:/this/path/right/here

Or the remote to local example right here:

scp [email protected]:cool_stuff.txt /this/path/right/here

Now if the remote server does not allow SSH and only SFTP, then SFTP is the way to go. But scp is very useful when you want to just toss a file and not do the whole SFTP process manually from the command line.

When login to remote server is through ssh key, we can use below -i flag to pass our key to the server:

scp -i /path/to/.ssh/id_rsa path/to/file/myFiles.gz myServer.com:/folder/on/server

-i identity_file
Selects the file from which the identity (private key) for public key authentication is read.
This option is directly passed to ssh(1).

To add on to Jake’s answer, you could specify a location—instead of just .—to copy to by adding the path at the end of the URL as:

scp /path/to/file username@servername/ip:/destination/folder/