Now that you already have your Ubuntu Server up and running, adding FTP is actually quite easy. There are numerous FTP servers available, but the one I tend to prefer is vsftpd. Not only is it more secure than many other FTP servers, it’s easy to install and configure, even for anonymous use.

In this article you will see how to get vsftpd installed and configured for both user login and anonymous use.

Installing vsftpd

Since the installation for the base server is a GUI-less Ubuntu 9.04, the entire installation and configuration will be done from the command line. Log into your server and then issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

The above command will install everything needed for your FTP server. What you will find is your configuration file located in the /etc directory and the executable located in /etc/init.d/. By default vsftpd is installed to allow ONLY anonymous download. The default location for anonymous files is in /home/ftp. So by default all you need to do is place files you want to be accessible anonymously in /home/ftp, start the vsftp daemon with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd start

And you can immediately connect anonymously. Any file located within /home/ftp will be available to anonymous users. That’s not a bad setup for an internal LAN. But if you need to control what people use/see, or if you do not want to allow anonymous access, you will have to take care of a little configuration.

Configuring user-authenticated login

Let’s say you have four users on your system that need access to their own individual accounts. For this you will need to enable user-authenticated login. This is done within the /etc/vsftpd.conf file. Open up this file and scroll down to around line 26. Here you will see the entry:

#local_enable=YES

Notice the “#” symbol at the beginning of the line? This means that line is commented out. Remove the “#” symbol, save the file, restart vsftpd, and now anyone with an account on your ftp server can log in with their username and password.

But what if the users need to upload as well as download? Simple. Below the local_enable line you will see the line:

#write_enable=YES

Uncomment out that line and restart vsftpd to enable write access for your users. Remember, you have to restart vsftpd any time you make a change to the configuration file. You can also disable anonymous access by commenting out the line:

anonymous_enable=YES

This can be handy for departments as well. Say you have an editorial department, a graphics department, and an accounting department. You will have to have those accounts added to the system. You can add those accounts (and their home directories) with these commands:

sudo useradd -m ACCOUNT_NAME

sudo passwd ACCOUNT_NAME

Where ACCOUNT_NAME is the name of the user account to create. The above commands will create the user, the users’ home directory, and give the user a password.

Once these accounts have been created you can log into the FTP server with the username and password.

Final thoughts

Setting up an FTP server couldn’t be any easier. With the Ubuntu Server already up and running, you can have anonymous ftp set up in about a minute.

The aim of this article is to show you how to quickly set up an ftp server for user access and anonymous access on your Linux server.

Installing

Installing proftpd is simple. If you are in a gui environment, open up your Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for proftpd, select the resulting proftpd entry, and apply the changes. If you are not in a gui environment you can issue a command similar to:

sudo apt-get install proftpd

or

yum install proftpd

To install the tool.

Configuration

The configuration file for proftpd is /etc/proftpd.conf. The first portion of the configuration file is dedicated to the main configuration options. If you are setting up a basic ftp server the only thing you may want to edit in this section is the ServerAdmin email address. In this same section you can switch the server from a stand-alone server (default) to an inetd-based by uncommenting the type you want and commenting out the type you don’t want.

Interestingly enough, once installed, by default you will have user-level ftp access by just starting the proftpd daemon. To do this issue the command:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/proftpd start

or

/etc/init.d/proftpd start

depending upon your distribution.

When your users log into their ftp account they will default to their home directory and can not navigate above their ~/ directory.

Anonymous access

Now if you want to add anonymous ftp access you have to visit another section of the /etc/proftpd.conf file. If you scroll down to around line 104 of this file you will see the opening anonymous tag “<Anonymous>”. Everything between this tag and the closing tag, “</Anonymous>” refers to anonymous configuration.

By default all of the anonymous configuration is commented out. To create a simple anonymous ftp server setup you will want to uncomment out the following lines:

< Anonymous >
User                          ftp
Group                         ftp
AccessGrantMsg                "Anonymous login ok, restrictions apply."
UserAlias                     anonymous ftp
MaxClients                    10 "Sorry, max %m users -- try again later"
DefaultChdir                  /pub
< /Anonymous >

NOTE: There will be no spaces in the opening and closing tags.

Once you uncomment out them, restart the proftpd server and anonymous access will have been granted to users. When anonymous users log in to the server they will be confined to the /var/ftp directory (although to the user it will appear as “/”). Anonymous users will have access to two directories: pub and uploads. The pub directory is where anonymous users can download files and the uploads directory is where anonymous users can upload files.

Final Thoughts

Proftpd is one of the easiest ftp servers to get up and running. It is safe, reliable, and allows simple configuration for anonymous access. If you are looking for an ftp server that requires little hardware, can be deployed quickly, and will “just work” then proftpd is the logical choice.