Problem scenario
You want to copy files between RedHat Linux servers with adherence to security best practices. You try to use scp but you get "Permission denied." What do you do to copy files in a secure way?
Solution
1. Verify you can SSH from one server to the other. For directions for setting up SSH in a cross-cloud environment, you may want to see this posting. If firewall rules prevent this, then scp will not work either.
2. Ensure that you can create files in the destination directory. You may want to use scp to try to copy a file to the /tmp/ directory first then try directory destinations with stricter write permissions. Local server directory permissions could be the problem. You are done.
3. This is purely optional and informational. For further information about scp, see this link. If you want to read more about technical security topics, see the many pages of this internal posting. If you are interested in buying a book on I.T. security, see this posting.