[HOWTO] Sharing files with vsftpd ftp server

[MikkelM]

Smart. Thanks dude

[BatteryCell]

This was an awesome guide!!! I had so much trouble with proftpd & was pulling my hair out, all I wanted to do was share files & samba wasn't very happy with my macintosh. vsftpd was working in minutes . However I have a iMac G5. Using the finder to connect to my Ubuntu machine (Command K) it mounts in NFS format and I cannot place files into the Ubuntu FTP directory even though I issued a "chmod 777". The only way for me to access the Ubuntu machine is through Transmit an FTP client for Mac OS X. I'm at a loss but thanks for this great guide anyway.

Um, I dont know if your still wondering but once you have your samba up (and your connected to atleast one computer) its pretty easy to add others, for windows just mount a new network drive and for mac, well, do the same thing. Windows mounting is described in http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthre...ht=samba+howto (as well how to set samba up) and here is mac:
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/FAQ/cache/129.html
I beleive that to make it run at startup you have to do that in your user profile, though my sister doesnt let me use her comp. except in dire concequences...

[treborblack]

i'm sure i've followed the instructions to the letter, but i cant connect and to the best of my knowledge it aint even running

i type sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd start
* Starting FTP server: vsftpd [ ok ]

this would make you believe its running but nothing shows up on ksysguard i cant connect. it was a clean install and i've never installed a firewall.

any ideas what i must have done wrong

[treborblack]

on rebooting the computer

this outpit regarding the server comes up which i've photographed

[K.Mandla]

Thanks for the howto. This proved useful for a lightweight FTP server in a live CD environment.

However, in my case I wanted to disallow anonymous logins, and allow only local users to log in (in other words, I had to add user accounts for the logins to the FTP service).

In case that's what you're after, this is what my vsftpd.conf file looked like. ...

listen=YES

local_enable=YES
userlist_enable=YES
userlist_deny=NO

chroot_local_user=YES
chroot_list_enable=YES

anonymous_enable=NO
anon_root=/home/ftp/
anon_mkdir_write_enable=NO
anon_other_write_enable=NO
anon_upload_enable=NO

write_enable=YES

force_dot_files=YES
dirmessage_enable=YES

xferlog_enable=YES
dual_log_enable=YES

connect_from_port_20=YES

ascii_upload_enable=YES
ascii_download_enable=YES

ftpd_banner=Welcome to the FTP server.

secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd
pam_service_name=vsftpd
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
rsa_private_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

There are a couple of other quirks in there -- I like the dotted up directories included by default, and the dual log option makes a log at /var/log/vsftpd.log -- but otherwise I think this should work for just about anyone.

Don't forget to make lists of approved users in vsftpd.user_list and vsftpd.chroot_list.

Cheers!

[Kardelen]

I have done as told in first msg, and get connected with gFTP via anonymous account. Then I wanted to upload sth. It created the directory, however, couldn't create the file. Here is the message:

STOR /upload/(25342)Dune_25fps_2CD_Turkce_SubRip_DiVXPlanet/Dune CD1 TR.srt

553 Could not create file.
Loading directory listing /upload/(25342)Dune_25fps_2CD_Turkce_SubRip_DiVXPlanet from server (LC_TIME=en_AU.UTF-8)

How could I resolve the problem?

[john_spiral]

Hi,

I've got vsftpd going on my local network (2 machines) one ubuntu one DSL (damm small linux) machine.

I can ftp small binary files from the ubuntu machine down onto the DSL machine but the ftp server (runnig under Ubuntu) gives the following error on a large 700 meg .iso file:

550 Failed to open file?

any ideas if there is a large file config section?

Same problem even if I open an ftp session on the server (ubuntu machine)

thanks

John

[barret]

Thanks for the howto. This proved useful for a lightweight FTP server in a live CD environment.

However, in my case I wanted to disallow anonymous logins, and allow only local users to log in (in other words, I had to add user accounts for the logins to the FTP service).

In case that's what you're after, this is what my vsftpd.conf file looked like. ...

listen=YES

local_enable=YES
userlist_enable=YES
userlist_deny=NO

chroot_local_user=YES
chroot_list_enable=YES

anonymous_enable=NO
anon_root=/home/ftp/
anon_mkdir_write_enable=NO
anon_other_write_enable=NO
anon_upload_enable=NO

write_enable=YES

force_dot_files=YES
dirmessage_enable=YES

xferlog_enable=YES
dual_log_enable=YES

connect_from_port_20=YES

ascii_upload_enable=YES
ascii_download_enable=YES

ftpd_banner=Welcome to the FTP server.

secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd
pam_service_name=vsftpd
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
rsa_private_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

There are a couple of other quirks in there -- I like the dotted up directories included by default, and the dual log option makes a log at /var/log/vsftpd.log -- but otherwise I think this should work for just about anyone.

Don't forget to make lists of approved users in vsftpd.user_list and vsftpd.chroot_list.

Cheers!

Check out the man page for vsftpd:

chroot_list_enable
If activated, you may provide a list of local users who are placed in a chroot() jail in their home directory upon login. The meaning is slightly different if chroot_local_user is set to YES. In this case, the list becomes a list of users which are NOT to be placed in a chroot() jail. By default, the file containing this list is /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list, but you may override this with the chroot_list_file setting.

Default: NO
chroot_local_user
If set to YES, local users will be (by default) placed in a chroot() jail in their home directory after login. Warning: This option has security implications, especially if the users have upload permission, or shell access. Only enable if you know what you are doing. Note that these security implications are not vsftpd specific. They apply to all FTP daemons which offer to put local users in chroot() jails.

Default: NO

So if you have both set to YES, whatever local user that logs in can view every folder/file on your system. I set chroot_local_user to NO and now it locks the user to their home directory. Other than that thanks for the config file, definitely helped.

[danielprice]

Hi all,
As a bit of a newb to linux, I was wondering what was the best way to get vsftpd to start at boot-up, preferably before a user even logs into the system. Is this even possible?

Thanks.

[talkin]

Thanx for this how-to. But i have such trouble:
I've directrory "ubload" for upload at the /home/ftp/. My vsftpd.conf is exactly the same as this howto's is. But if someone uploads directory with some files to my "upload" directory, then this directory and all files in it beginn belong to user named "ftp" with "nogroup" group which doesn't even exist. So I've to change file mode manually to even read files in that directory. But it works fine if files are uploaded to "upload". Such files belong to me, and there're no problems with reading & writing them.
I've read "man vsftpd.conf" but couldn't find anything to solve such problem (may be i missed something )
Any suggestions?