Copying contents of .NET build folder to Ubuntu server using Plink

Question

I'm building a pre-deploy script in PowerShell that creates a production build of my .NET Core Web Api application and then SSHs into my Ubuntu Digital Ocean Droplet via SSH key.

I'm currently at a stage where I create the build, copy the build folder using Copy-Item, SSH into my server and then this is where I'm completely stuck.

I know that I can run BASH commands from my PowerShell script because I've tried some basic operations like creating and deleting a directory, I can cd in and out of directories. I've tried storing the copied .NET build folder in memory as a variable: $build = Copy-Item -Path $projectBuildPath -Recurse and then found out that this can't be done (shame really, that would have been cool) and then opening a session to my server via p-link cli like so:

plink.exe -ssh -i $SSHKeyLocation $linuxRemoteHost "cd path\to\server\build-folder && paste ${build}"

But again because you can't store copied directories in memory, this failed.

My PowerShell script looks like this:

$projectRootDir
$projectBuildPath
$linuxRemoteHost
$SSHKeyLocation

Set-Location $projectRootDir
Write-Host "Building .NET application..."

dotnet publish --configuration Release --verbosity normal

Write-Host "Built Successfully..."
Write-Host "Copying project build files"

$build = Copy-Item -Path $projectBuildPath -Recurse
# fails, for obvious reasons

Write-Host "Remoting into MusicPortal Server..."

plink.exe -ssh -i $SSHKeyLocation $linuxRemoteHost "cd path\to\server\build-folder && paste ${build}"
# SSH Connection successful, paste command fails

Write-Host "Remote successfull, transfering build files..."

exit 0

What should I do in order to successfully paste the copied directory to my server? I'm such a noob with PowerShell and SSH.

Answer 1

It's quite strange to try to use plink to upload files to a server. As you didn't give any particular reason, why you want to use plink, I'm assuming that it's a mistake.

You do not want to use plink. You want to use psftp or pscp (both part of the same PuTTY package as plink).

pscp -r -i $SSHKeyLocation $projectBuildPath $linuxRemoteHost:/path/to/server/build-folder/