Zhylon Remote Fetch

Simple bash tool to fetch files/directories from remote servers as tar.gz archives. Works on macOS and Linux.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zhylon/remote-fetch/main/install.sh | bash

Update later with the same command, or:

remote-fetch --update

Configure

remote-fetch config add prod
remote-fetch config edit

~/.config/remote-fetch/servers.conf:

[prod]
host=deploy@prod.example.com
key=~/.ssh/id_ed25519
port=22

[staging]
host=user@staging.example.com
key=~/.ssh/staging_key

List servers: remote-fetch config list

Usage

Default workflow — pack on remote, download, extract locally, clean up both sides:

remote-fetch prod /var/www/app/storage/logs

Into a specific output directory:

remote-fetch prod /var/www/app/storage -o ~/backups

Keep things around (any combination):

remote-fetch prod /var/www/app/storage --keep-remote --keep-local --no-extract

Flag	Effect
--keep-remote	don't delete the tar.gz on the remote server
--keep-local	don't delete the tar.gz after extracting
--no-extract	don't extract locally (implies keep-local)
-o <dir>	output directory (default: current dir)

Direct copy — single file or dir, no tar wrapping (uses rsync):

remote-fetch copy prod /var/www/app/.env
remote-fetch copy prod /var/www/app/.env ~/secrets

Commands

remote-fetch <server> <remote-path> [flags]   # default: tar workflow
remote-fetch copy <server> <path> [out-dir]   # direct rsync
remote-fetch config list|edit|add <n>|path
remote-fetch --update
remote-fetch --version

Requirements

ssh, rsync, tar, curl — all preinstalled on macOS and standard Ubuntu.

How it works

Default fetch runs (in order):

1. ssh remote "tar czf /tmp/xxx.tar.gz <path>"
2. rsync pulls the archive with --partial (resumable)
3. tar xzf locally
4. rm both archives

Each step can be disabled via flags.