Administrator Guide

Using the CLI 253
Copying Files
The copy command not only provides a method for copying files within the
file system, but also to and from remote servers. With the copy command and
URLs to identify files, the user can back up images to local or remote systems
or restore images from local or remote systems.
To use the copy command, the user specifies the source file and the
destination file. For example, copy tftp://remotehost/pub/backupfile backup-
config copies a file from the remote TFTP server to a local backup
configuration file. In this case, if the local configuration file does not exist,
then it is created by the command. If it does exist, it is overwritten. If there is
not enough space on the local file system to accommodate the file, an error is
flagged.
Refer to the copy command description in the Layer 2 commands section of
the guide for command details.
Referencing External/Internal File systems
Configuration or software images are copied to or retrieved from remote
systems using the TFTP or FTP protocols.
• tftp://server-name/path/filename — identifies a file on a remote TFTP
server identified by the server-name. Trivial file transfer protocol is a
simplified FTP and uses a UDP port instead of TCP and does not have
password protection.
• <ftp://{user@ipaddress | hostname}/filepath/filename> — Identifies a
file on a remote FTP server identified by the server-name. The File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standardized protocol used to transfer files
over the network using TCP. FTP is optionally secured with a clear-text
user name and password.
Special System Files
The following special filenames are used to refer to special virtual system files,
which are under control of the system and may not be removed or added.
These file names are reserved and may not be used as user-defined files.
When the user copies a local source file into one of these special files and the
source file has an attached file description, it also is copied as the file
description for the special file.
• backup-config — This file refers to the backup configuration file.