Move files in and out

Upload datasets and download results with scp, rsync, SFTP clients, JupyterLab, direct downloads inside the container, and FairGPU checkpoints.

Rule one: keep everything under /workspace. The rest of the container is scratch and is wiped when the rental stops. Rule two: for anything on the public internet, download it inside the container; the host's connection is usually far faster than your upload, and the bytes do not cross the relay twice.

The port in the examples (30123) is your rental's SSH port from the Connect dialog.

From your computer with scp / rsync

Windows

scp ships with Windows 10+. rsync does not: use WinSCP (below), or install rsync via Git Bash / WSL.

# upload a folder
scp -P 30123 -r .\data [email protected]:/workspace/
# upload one file
scp -P 30123 .\model.safetensors [email protected]:/workspace/models/
# download results
scp -P 30123 -r [email protected]:/workspace/output .\output

macOS

# upload a folder (resumable, only changed files)
rsync -avz --progress -e "ssh -p 30123" ./data/ [email protected]:/workspace/data/
# download results
rsync -avz --progress -e "ssh -p 30123" [email protected]:/workspace/output/ ./output/
# single files
scp -P 30123 model.safetensors [email protected]:/workspace/

Linux

# upload a folder (resumable, only changed files)
rsync -avz --progress -e "ssh -p 30123" ./data/ [email protected]:/workspace/data/
# download results
rsync -avz --progress -e "ssh -p 30123" [email protected]:/workspace/output/ ./output/
# single files
scp -P 30123 model.safetensors [email protected]:/workspace/

Trailing slashes matter to rsync: data/ copies the contents, data copies the folder itself.

With a graphical SFTP client

Windows

WinSCP (free): File protocol SFTP, Host name relay.fairgpu.io, Port 30123, User name root. Under Advanced → SSH → Authentication pick your private key; WinSCP converts an OpenSSH key to .ppk when asked. Or paste the link from the Connect dialog (sftp://[email protected]:30123/workspace) into Open session. Drag and drop both ways.

FileZilla also works: sftp://relay.fairgpu.io, port 30123, user root, key under Edit → Settings → SFTP → Add key file.

macOS

Cyberduck or FileZilla: SFTP, server relay.fairgpu.io, port 30123, user root, key ~/.ssh/id_ed25519. Finder cannot mount SFTP by itself; use a client or rsync.

Linux

FileZilla: sftp://relay.fairgpu.io, port 30123, user root, key under Settings → SFTP. GNOME Files / Dolphin: type sftp://[email protected]:30123/workspace in the address bar.

From JupyterLab

Open JupyterLab from the Connect dialog. The left file browser accepts drag-and-drop uploads (files up to a few GB are fine) and right-click → Download for results. Good for notebooks, images and small datasets.

Inside the container (fastest for public data)

cd /workspace
git clone https://github.com/you/repo.git
wget -P /workspace/data https://example.com/dataset.zip
aria2c -x 8 -d /workspace/data https://example.com/big.tar      # parallel download
pip install -U "huggingface_hub[cli]"
huggingface-cli download meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct --local-dir /workspace/models/llama-3.1-8b
# with a token for gated models: set HF_TOKEN as an env var or a stored secret when renting

Official images redirect the Hugging Face cache into /workspace/.cache, so models downloaded through transformers or diffusers persist too.

Your own bucket: aws s3 sync, rclone, gsutil all work from inside; or set up a cloud sync target once and tick pull on start / push on stop when renting to mirror /workspace automatically.

Download the whole workspace

On the rental page, Progress safety → Download workspace gives you a .tar.zst of /workspace (a fresh checkpoint is made first if the last one is older than 10 minutes). Unpack:

Windows

Install zstd or use 7-Zip (which opens .tar.zst since 21.x). PowerShell with zstd on PATH:

zstd -d workspace.tar.zst
tar -xf workspace.tar

macOS

brew install zstd
tar --use-compress-program=unzstd -xf workspace.tar.zst

Linux

sudo apt install zstd      # or dnf / pacman
tar --use-compress-program=unzstd -xf workspace.tar.zst

Upload a whole workspace

Workspaces → Checkpoints → Upload workspace (or the same button in Progress safety) takes a .tar.zst, .tar, .tar.gz or .zip of up to 5 GB and turns it into a checkpoint you can restore into any rental, on any machine. Make the archive from the folder's contents:

tar -C ./workspace -cf - . | zstd -3 -o workspace.tar.zst

Uploads go from your browser straight to the storage bucket; nothing passes through a host.

What about the host?

Hosts never see your files: the workspace volume is mounted only inside your container, and transfers go through the relay or straight to FairGPU storage. Treat the machine like public compute anyway: open data, open models, hobby projects.

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