Downloading Files from a VPS Using SSH Config Aliases

TL;DR Once SSH config is set up, scp works directly with aliases — no need to type out the full IP every time

Table of Contents

TL;DR
The Problem
The Solution
Advanced: Pulling Files from a Docker Container
Key Takeaway
References

TL;DR

Once ~/.ssh/config is set up, scp works directly with aliases — no need to type the IP, port, and username every time.

The Problem

When you need to pull a file from a VPS to your local machine, the straightforward approach is scp:

scp -P 22 root@your-vps-ip:/path/to/file .

But if you manage more than one VPS, or if the port isn’t the default 22, remembering the IP and port for each server gets tedious fast.

The Solution

~/.ssh/config lets you define an alias for each host, centralizing all connection details in one place:

Host daodao
    HostName your-vps-ip
    User root
    Port 22
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

With this in place, ssh daodao is equivalent to ssh -p 22 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa root@your-vps-ip.

The key insight is that scp and rsync both respect ~/.ssh/config, so you can use the alias directly:

# Download a single file
scp daodao:/path/to/file .

# Download an entire directory
scp -r daodao:/path/to/dir ./local-destination

For large files or directories, rsync is the better choice — it supports incremental transfers and can resume interrupted operations:

rsync -avz daodao:/path/to/dir ./local-destination

-a: preserve file permissions, timestamps, and other metadata
-v: show transfer progress
-z: compress during transfer, helpful on slow connections

Advanced: Pulling Files from a Docker Container

If the file you need lives inside a Docker container on the VPS, there’s one extra step. Using an nginx container as an example:

Option 1: Two steps

# First, copy the file from the container to the VPS
ssh daodao "docker cp nginx:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf /tmp/nginx.conf"

# Then pull it from the VPS to your local machine
scp daodao:/tmp/nginx.conf .

Option 2: One-liner

ssh daodao "docker cp nginx:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf /tmp/nginx.conf" && scp daodao:/tmp/nginx.conf .

docker cp <container-name>:<path-inside-container> <path-on-vps> moves the file out of the container, after which you download it from the VPS the same way as any other file.

Key Takeaway

Both scp and rsync honor ~/.ssh/config. Set up an alias once, and you can use the same name for SSH connections and file transfers alike. For files inside containers, use docker cp to move them to the host first, then follow the same download workflow.