Gaia: Invalid command:’scp -t’ Error

Invalid command:’scp -t /path/to/dir/’

This article explains the cause of the “Invalid command:’scp -t xxxxx'” error and how to solve it.

Background

Researching this error actually brought to my attention two undocumented switches of the scp command: “-f” and “-t”.

These flags are automatically added to the command when it’s run depending on whether you’re copying to (-t) or from (-f):

Command                                                                                                              Actual command run

scp ./myfile.txt   name@server:/myfile.txt               scp -t /myfile.txt

scp  name@server:/myfile.txt  ./myfile.txt               scp -f /myfile.txt

This can be seen when running scp with the -v verbose/debug flag:

linux:/ # scp -v myfile.txt name@server:/home/name/myfile.txt
Executing: program /usr/bin/ssh host server, user admin, command scp -v -t /home/admin/myfile.txt
<snip>
CLINFR0329  Invalid command:'scp -v -t /home/name/myfile.txt'.
linux:/ #

Solution

Besides being of interest regarding the -f and -t flags, the only thing that we can really glean from this is that the remote system doesn’t recognise the command, the flags or both.

In the case of Checkpoint Gaia it is down to the fact that the default shell is “clish” and not bash which is required for scp.

To mitigate this we can set the default login shell to be bash, either temporarily or permanently, using a quick command from clish:

gw-8f991f> set user admin shell /bin/bash
gw-8f991f> save config
gw-8f991f>

To make this change only temporarily, do not use the “save config” command.

To revert the change:

gw-8f991f> set user admin shell /etc/cli.sh
gw-8f991f> save config

Hope you save yourself some time!