In SSH, how do I mv to my local system?

First things first: ssh is a way to remotely login to another computer. The shell (command line) you get after you ssh is (pretty much) the same as if you had opened a xterm in the remote machine. If offers no such way to move files.

However, the fact that the remote computer accepts ssh connections gives you some options to exchange files:

Use scp To copy from your local computer to the remote, type, in the local computer:

scp /tmp/file [email protected]:/home/name/dir

(where /tmp/file can be replaced with any local file and /home/name/dir with any remote directory)

To copy from the remote computer to the local one, type, in the local computer:

scp [email protected]:/home/name/dir/file /tmp

Use sshfs This is a little more advanced but much, much nicer (when the internet connection of both computers is good. If not, stick to scp)

You can "link" a directory from the remote computer to an (empty) directory of the local computer. Say you "link" the /some/remote/dir from the remote computer to /home/youruser/remotecomp in your computer. If there is a file /some/remote/dir/file in the remote computer, you can see it on /home/youruser/remotecomp/file. You can copy and mv as usual, and you can even alter remote files and dirs.

Note however, that when the connection ends, /home/youruser/remotecomp becomes an empty dir again, and you only keep in the local computer the files you copied to other directories

To achieve this:

1) install sshfs:

sudo apt-get install sshfs

2) create a empty dir

mkdir /home/youruser/remotecomp

3) "link" the two directories (the right term is mount)

sshfs [email protected]:/some/remote/dir /home/youruser/remotecomp

4) Enjoy

5) "unlink" the dirs

fusermount -u /home/youruser/remotecomp

If the local computer runs windows You can find versions of scp for windows. See, e.g, winscp

You can either use scp or rsync. In your local system:

scp remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/dir/file /local/dir/

But, since you mentioned backup, I assume that it would be incremental and you'll need to do it every now and then. So, rsync is a better choice for incremental backup. On your local shell:

rsync -avz -e ssh remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/dir /local/dir/

see rsync(1)and scp(1) man pages for options.

You could use scp secure copy.

From you local shell:

scp -C username@webhost:/path/of-the/tar.archive /home/mydirectory/backups/

This example will copy via ssh from /path/of-the/tar.archive of your webhost to /home/mydirectory/backups/

Extra options:

-C: Enables compression