I'm going to perform some maintenance on my VPS (Ubuntu Server 15.04), and I would like to back up some files before doing so. The problem is that some of these files are under other users' home directories or otherwise locked-down places, so I cannot access them normally via SFTP. I considered using a local SSH server to transfer files to my computer (Windows 8.1 x64), but I'm behind a university network and can't forward a port to my computer as would be required to do that.What is a secure way to get these files to my computer? It's my server, so I obviously have root access, but I don't want to change permissions on things unless I have to.
Backing up VPS via SSH/SFTP
ubuntu;ssh;sftp