scp(1) doesn't really distinguish client and server. There's source and sink, which is determined by the transfer direction. Without scp(1) on the path on the r

scp(1) doesn't really distinguish client and server. There's source and sink, which is determined by the transfer direction. Without scp(1) on the path on the remote end, scp is not going to work. (Some SSH implementations may implement scp internally, though, by parsing the exec requests sent by the connected client). If you do "scp foo user@host:/bar", then scp ssh's into user@host and executes scp(1) there with a flag that tells it to go into sink mode. When you swap the arguments, it uses a flag that tells it to send the files you want in source mode.