Method 1 : Using SSH

To connect to a remote SSH server and copy the contents of a file, you can use the following command. This command executes cat on the remote server and pipes the output into xclip to copy it to the clipboard:

ssh -n USER@REMOTE "cat /home/riven/somefile" | xclip -selection clipboard

Note: You need to have the xclip package installed on your local machine.

IF you have the following error :

cat some/file.txt | xclip
Error: Can't open display: (null)

Do the following fix :

$ export DISPLAY=:0
$ echo 'some text' | xclip -selection clipboard

Method 2 : Using NetCat

This method does not require SSH access; instead, it utilizes the netcat-openbsd package.

On the Remote Host:

To listen for incoming connections and send the contents of a file, run:

cat FILE | nc -lvnp 4000

On the Local Host:

You can receive the file using nc:

nc -v REMOTE 4000 | xclip -selection clipboard

Alternatively, you can use wget to save the file directly:

wget -O- REMOTE:PORT > FILE

Method 2 : Using HTTP Server

You can easily launch an HTTP server using various methods:

Using python3 :

To start a simple HTTP server, run:

python3 -m http.server 8080

Using PHP :

To launch an HTTP server with PHP, use:

php -S 127:0.0.1:8000

Or, to specify a document root:

php -S 127:0.0.1:8000 -t /var/lib/www

While you can also use more advanced servers like Nginx or Apache, they may be overly complex for our needs.