What cause the error "Couldn't canonicalise: No such file or directory" in SFTP?

Question

I am trying to use SFTP to upload the entire directory to remote host but I got a error.(I know SCP does work, but I really want to figure out the problem of SFTP.)

I used the command as below: (echo "put -r LargeFile/"; echo quit)|sftp -vb - username@remotehost:TEST/

But I got the error "Couldn't canonicalise: No such file or directory""Unable to canonicalise path "/home/s1238262/TEST/LargeFile"

I thought it was caused by access rights. So, I opened a SFTP connection to the remote host in interactive mode and tried to create a new directory "LargeFile" in TEST/. And I succeeded. Then, I used the same command as above to uploading the entire directory "LargeFile". I also succeeded. The subdirectories in LargeFile were create or copied automatically.

So, I am confused. It seems only the LargeFile/ directory cannot be created in non-interactive mode. What's wrong with it or my command?

Answer 1

With SFTP you can only copy if the directory exists. So

> mkdir LargeFile
> put -r path_to_large_file/LargeFile

Same as the advice in the link from @Vidhuran but this should save you some reading.

Answer 2

This error could possibly occur because of the -r option. Refer https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/7004/uploading-directories-with-sftp

Answer 3

The easiest way for me was to zip my folder on local LargeFile.zip and simply put LargeFile.zip

zip -r LargeFile.zip LargeFile
sftp www.mywebserver.com (or ip of the webserver)
put LargeFile.zip (it will be on your remote server local directory)
unzip Largefile.zip

Answer 4

A better way is through using scp.

scp -r LargeFile/"; echo quit)|sftp -vb - username@remotehost:TEST/