Hi Team, Last time in my email one space was missing and that lead to confusion I guess. I am very sorry for typo. The cp command I tried to execute over ssh ----snip--- [user1@test ~]$ *ssh user1@test sh -c 'cp -vPprf /tmp/123 /tmp/4576'* user1@test's password: cp: missing file arguments Try `cp --help' for more information. ----snip--- last time by mistake I missed space between ssh user1@test and sh -c 'cp -vPprf /tmp/123 /tmp/4576' but it's always failing. I have tried the same command on multiple Linux system and found same failure. I dig into further following are the observations ---snip--- [user1@test ~]$ *which cp/bin/cp* [user1@test ~]$ *cp --versioncp (GNU coreutils) 5.97* Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General Public License . There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering. ---snip--- Then I execute [user1@test ~]$ *ssh user1@test sh -c "'which cp; cp -vPprf /tmp/123 /tmp/4576'"* user1@test's password: */usr/local/bin/cp* cp: Warning: the meaning of `-P' will change in the future to conform to POSIX. Use `--parents' for the old meaning, and `--no-dereference' for the new one. /tmp -> /tmp/4576/tmp `/tmp/123' -> `/tmp/4576/tmp/123' [user1@test ~]$* /usr/local/bin/cp --version* cp (fileutils) 4.1 Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering. Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. So from the above observation it's very clear the problem is while trying to execute cp command over ssh then it's taking */usr/local/bin/cp *instead of */bin/cp *which is causing the problem. But in *PATH *env variable */bin* is preceding */usr/local/bin * [user1@test ~]$ *echo $PATH* /usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:*/bin* :/usr/bin:/usr/dev_infra/platform/bin:/usr/dev_infra/generic/bin: */usr/local/bin*:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/ade/bin:/scratch/user1/bin Even I checked in over ssh in PATH /bin appearing before /usr/local/bin [user1@test ~]$ *ssh user1@test sh -c "'echo $PATH; which cp; cp -vPprf /tmp/123 /tmp/4576'"* user1@test's password: /usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:*/bin* :/usr/bin:/usr/dev_infra/platform/bin:/usr/dev_infra/generic/bin: */usr/local/bin*:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/ade/bin:/scratch/user1/bin */usr/local/bin/cp* cp: Warning: the meaning of `-P' will change in the future to conform to POSIX. Use `--parents' for the old meaning, and `--no-dereference' for the new one. Can you please give me any pointer why over ssh cp command is taking */usr/local/bin *specific executable rather than* /bin* specific executable? Is there any way to force the cp command to take /bin specific executable over ssh? Thanks in advance. Best Regards, Kousik