sftp command not found

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

sftp: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: sftp: command not found

Solutions to sftp: command not found

How To Fix sftp: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu sftp is provided by openssh-client package.

openssh-client is:

This is the portable version of OpenSSH, a free implementation of the Secure Shell protocol as specified by the IETF secsh working group.

Ssh (Secure Shell) is a program for logging into a remote machine and for executing commands on a remote machine. It provides secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network. X11 connections and arbitrary TCP/IP ports can also be forwarded over the secure channel. It can be used to provide applications with a secure communication channel.

This package provides the ssh, scp and sftp clients, the ssh-agent and ssh-add programs to make public key authentication more convenient, and the ssh-keygen, ssh-keyscan, ssh-copy-id and ssh-argv0 utilities.

In some countries it may be illegal to use any encryption at all without a special permit.

ssh replaces the insecure rsh, rcp and rlogin programs, which are obsolete for most purposes.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install openssh-client

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install openssh-client.

sudo apt -y install openssh-client

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install openssh-client

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix sftp command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.