HOWTO : Create a FTP server with user access (proftpd)

[z-vet]

By the way, did some tried this guide with dapper ?

Thanks for the feedback.

I did and have no problems with it. Thanks, frodon

[LordMerlin]

That's a lot of work just to allow each user FTP access to his home folder!!!

Isn't there any other FTP server I can use which is just plain straight forward?

[frodon]

I gave you a secure way to do it but there are plenty of less secure solutions which are easier to set and this will be true with other FTP servers.

I know it will take you 15min to set it up but you only do it once, as for needed mount commands just put them in a script and it's done.

Anyway other popular servers are pureftp and vsftpd.

[duffydack]

Ive setup proftpd on breezy and it works fine. I installed proftpd in dapper and setup exactly the same and its a lot slower when logging in and navigating folders, generally lot slower..

[GlurG]

Hi,

First post here, yay! Glad that I've found a thread which discusses proftpd configs. Anyhow, I have a couple of questions:

1) In the HOWTO-guide (the secure way), why is the DefaultRoot-directive defined twice?

# Set /home/FTP-shared directory as home directory
DefaultRoot /home/FTP-shared

# Lock all the users in home directory, ***** really important *****
DefaultRoot ~

2) I've followed the HOWTO-guide, but when I connect to the FTP-server from my WinXP comp on the same network, the file list is empty. I was expecting to see the /upload and /download directory when I log in, but I don't.

3) Some of the <Directory path/to/somewhere/*> directives have a star at the end of the path. Why?

4) I will mainly use my FTP-server to upload files to my DocumentRoot for apache. Does anyhow any tips/suggestions regarding how to do this as secure as possible?

5) How do I add encryption to my FTP-connections?

6) Also, it would be nice to know how to create different users with different passwords and different "starting"/jail directories when they log in.

Thanks

[frodon]

1)Indeed one is enough but it tought it would help users who want to customise the config file to understand the principle of this command.

3)Good point, the star is not really needed since there's no sub-directories to include following the guide. You can remove them if you wish, it's up to you.

4) Mount your DocumentRoot directory in the upload directory thanks to a mount -o bind command, there's some examples at the end of the file.

5) I never did that but it's documented on the proftpd site : http://www.proftpd.org/.
You will find examples and support for that in the proftpd forum : http://forums.proftpd.org/phpBB2/

6) The users used by proftpd are the system users and you can add the users you want to allow in this section :

#VALID LOGINS
<Limit LOGIN>
AllowUser userftp
DenyALL
</Limit>

Don't forget to set an aliasname for them, i use this trick to prevent telnet accesses to the server.
If you use only the DefaultRoot ~ each user will access only his home directory when login.

I hope i have given you some of the informations you're looking for.

[GlurG]

Thanks for your response.

I'm still getting an empty directory listing when I login from my other (WinXP) comp. The DefaultRoot on the FTP-server is set to /home/FTP-shared/. I've created the upload and download directories and chmod:ed them. Still, I don't see them when I log in. I also tried to mount my webroot to /home/FTP-shared ... nothing. Why is this?

Offtopic: What does the 'sudo' command do?

[frodon]

Could you post your proftpd.conf file ?

About sudo, you should read that : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo

[GlurG]

Finally got it working. I had accidentaly defined ListOptions twice, so I deleted one of them and replaced the other with ListOptions "-A". Anyhow, here is my config file:

# Daemon settings
ServerName "Proftpd Server"
ServerType standalone
DeferWelcome on
AuthAliasOnly on
UserAlias sauron userftp
ListOptions "-A"
RequireValidShell off
AllowOverride off
AllowOverwrite on
MultilineRFC2228 on
DefaultServer on
ShowSymlinks off
ServerIdent off
RootLogin off
TimeoutNoTransfer 600
TimeoutStalled 600
TimeoutIdle 1200
DisplayLogin welcome.msg
DisplayFirstChdir .message
DenyFilter \*.*/
IdentLookups off
UserReverseDNS off
MaxLoginAttempts 3
AllowStoreRestart on
PersistentPasswd off

# Log
ExtendedLog /var/log/ftp.log
TransferLog /var/log/xfer.log
SystemLog /var/log/syslog.log

MaxClients 10
MaxClientsPerHost 10
MaxClientsPerUser 10
MaxHostsPerUser 10

DefaultRoot /home/FTP-shared/

<Limit LOGIN>
AllowUser userftp
DenyAll
</Limit>

<Directory /home/FTP-shared/>
Umask 022 022
AllowOverwrite off
<Limit MKD STOR DELE XMKD RNRF RNTO RMD XRMD>
DenyAll
</Limit>
</Directory>

<Directory /home/FTP-shared/download/*>
Umask 022 022
AllowOverwrite off
<Limit MKD STOR DELE XMKD RNRF RNTO RMD XRMD>
DenyAll
</Limit>
</Directory>

<Directory /home/FTP-shared/upload/>
Umask 022 022
AllowOverwrite on
<Limit READ RMD DELE>
DenyAll
</Limit>

<Limit STOR CWD MKD>
AllowAll
</Limit>
</Directory>

[elemental666]

I just setup proftp per this howto, everything work great, except when I connect from my laptop and upload stuff, the file permissions are dropped completly. This mean I can't upload entire directories. When I try to upload a directory with maybe 4 files in it, the directory gets created on the server, without any permisions at all. Then it can't open that directory to start copying files. The files likewise will get no permissions at all.

So how do I get it to copy the same file permissions that exist on the client to stay on the files/dirs when sent to the server?