Why is this gcloud compute copy-files producing an error message?

Question

When I execute the command

gcloud compute copy-files \"C:\\Users\\fName lName\\Desktop\\testtext.txt\" instancename:test.txt --zone europe-west1-a

Answer 1

Thanks asking this! This appears to be a bug in gcloud that we're now tracking. The issue is that gcloud compute copy-files is interpreting the colon in C:\Users\fNam... as a part of a remote path. As suggested by George's answer, the work around is to avoid local paths containing the colon character.

Answer 2

For example, to copy a remote directory to your local host, run:

   gcloud compute copy-files \
      my-instance:~/remote-dir \
      ~/local-dir \
      --zone us-central1-a

In the above example, “/remote-dir” from “my-instance” is copied into the “/local-dir” directory. Conversely, files from your local computer can be copied to a virtual machine:

gcloud compute copy-files \
    ~/my-local-file-1 \
    ~/my-local-file-2 \
    my-instance:~/remote-destination \
    --zone us-central1-a

Here's a real live example for you:

Copy a remote file directory to your local host, run:

gcloud compute copy-files \
      instance-4:~/ \
      ~/Desktop/project/scripts/step/folder/* \
      --zone asia-east1-a \
      --project 911911911911911 \

All files from your local computer can be copied to a virtual machine:

gcloud compute copy-files \
    ~/Desktop/project/scripts/step/folder/* \
    instance-3:~/ \
    --zone asia-east1-a \
    --project 911911911911911 \

Answer 3

In order to copy the file testtext.txt that you are specifying, you need to be in the path where that file is and specify its name while copying not the path.

Example: from your command line lets suppose you are in this path:

C:\Users\fName lName\Desktop\

Your command should be the following:

gcloud compute copy-files --zone europe-west1-b testtext.txt instancename:/PATH_where_you_want_the_file

Answer 4

instead of "C:\Users\fName lName\Desktop\testtext.txt"
use "\Users\fName lName\Desktop\testtext.txt" . That worked for me