Copying hdfs file to remote linux server using scp directly?
You can stream the data using linux pipes if ssh to server is available
hdfs dfs -cat my-file.txt | ssh myserver.com 'cat > /path/to/my-file.txt'First command reads the file data as a stream, second one redirects it to remote server. Worked for me. Take into account that ssh sometimes timeout if there's nothing on the wire for a long time.
Credits to this answer: https://superuser.com/questions/291829