Answer by user6702 for Download a file over an active SSH session

I came up with a way to do this with standard ssh. It's a script that duplicates the current ssh connection, finds your working directory on the remote machine and copies back the file you specify to the local machine. It needs 2 very small scripts (1 remote, 1 local) and 2 lines in your ssh config. The steps are as follows:

1. Add these 2 lines to your ~/.ssh/config:

   ControlMaster auto
   ControlPath ~/.ssh/socket-%r@%h:%p
   

   Now if you have an ssh connection to machineX open, you wont need passwords to open another one.

2. Make a 1-line script on the remote machine called ~/.grabCat.sh

   \#!/bin/bash<br>
   cat "$(pwdx $(pgrep -u $(whoami) bash) | grep -o '/.*' | tail -n 1)"/$1
   

3. Make a script on the local machine called ~/.grab.sh

   \#!/bin/bash
   [ -n "$3" ] && dir="$3" || dir="."
   ssh "$1" ".grabCat.sh $2" > "$dir/$2"
   

4. and make an alias for grab.sh in (~/.bashrc or wherever):

   alias grab=~/.grab.sh
   

That's it, all done. Now if you're logged in to machineX:/some/directory, just fire up a new terminal and type

grab machineX filename

That puts the file in your current working directory on the local machine. You can specify a different location as a third argument to "grab".

Note: Obviously both scripts must be "executable", ie chmod u+x filename.