To copy large files to many or all nodes in a cluster at once, pscp is very handy. It overlaps storing data to disk and transferring data on the network, therefore it scales very well with respect to the number of nodes. Arbitrary size of files may be copied, even archives containing large lists of files may be created and unpacked on-the-fly.

Pscp uses the ParaStation MPI pscom library for data transfers, that automatically will use the most effective communication channel available. If required, the communication layer may be controlled using environment variables, refer to ps_environment(7) for details. The client process on each node is spawned using the ParaStation MPI process management.

As pscp uses administrative ParaStation MPI tasks to spawn the client processes, the user must be a member of the adminuser list or the user's group must be a member of the admingroup list. By default, only root is a member of the adminuser list and therefore allowed to use pscp. Refer to ParaStation MPI User's Guide and psiadmin(8) for details.

For more details refer to ParaStation MPI User's Guide and pscp(8).