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.

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Easy Share is one of the few file hosts that offer ftp access. Users need to create a free account at the file host as the username and password of that account are also used as the username and password of the ftp connection. All they need to do after account creation is to point their ftp client to upload.easy-share.com and upload the files from that client. The ftp server supports resume. Users need to open the Easy Share website before 24 hours have passed to accept the ftp uploads in their account profile.

The file host supports remote uploads as well. This means that users can paste urls that point to files in the Easy Share upload script. The file host will then try to establish a connection to those servers and download the files from there. The maximum file size is set to 200 Megabytes currently.

Easy Share

Kiloupload is different from Easy Share as it does not offer free space on its own servers. It distributes uploaded files to various other free file hosts including Rapidshare, File Factory or MegaUpload. The service can be used from its web interface or by pointing a ftp client to ftp.kiloupload.com. Users need to create an account by providing an email address and password. The email address is the username for the ftp server and will also be used to inform the user once the files have been uploaded to the other file hosts.

The advantage of Kiloupload over Easy Share is that it is possible to upload files to multiple file hosts at once-

Kiloupload

Do you know of other file hosts that support free ftp access? Let us know in the comments.

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Home FTP Server is just one of many ftp server applications (read FTP Server Setup). It does come with a full set of features but it takes only a few clicks to have a basic ftp server up and running. The ftp server program uses a tabbed interface at the bottom for configuration and monitoring of the ftp server. The most important tab setup wise is the FTP Server tab which offers possibilities to add user accounts, specify directories, change settings of the ftp server and activate it in the end.

There are basically two ways users can connect to a ftp server by default. The first is an anonymous connection. This can be used by anyone and security minded administrators should disable that feature. The accessible directories and file rights can be defined for anonymous users in the settings. More important than anonymous users are member accounts. Each member account can be added for a single user or group of users who all share the same starting directory, access rights and restrictions on the ftp server.

It is for example possible to only allow the users to download files from the ftp server. The most secure setting is to create one user account for every user that should be able to connect to the ftp server. This can be problematic if you want to install an ftp server for dozens of users.

The settings manage every aspect of the ftp server from server and data port to Open SSL support, domain aliases and a web interface. The options of the Home Ftp Server application are quite extensive. Users can be banned from accessing the ftp server and the tool provides the ftp server administrator with the means to monitor files and users easily.

Home FTP Server is an easy to install and administrate ftp server for private usage. The administrative interface is a bit dusty but that’s not as important as the amount of options and settings available to the user. The ftp server application has a size of only 1 Megabyte and uses another two of computer memory while running minimized in the Windows System Tray.

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Any Client is one of those secure ftp clients that supports the ftp, sftp, webdav and ftps protocol. It runs remotely using Java and webmasters can use it to connect to their web servers to perform all the operations a ftp client offers them including file transfers and manipulations. The use of protocols that use encryption such as sftp or ftps ensure data safety during transfer. All settings and parameters are stored on the local computer system.

Cautious users might want to consider installing a secure ftp server directly on their web server that can be accessed using a web browser to avoid any security risks or complications that exist while trusting third party websites with your ftp data.

Any Client will load the Java Applet in the web browser and display the contents of the local computer system on the left. A click on the Connect button will open a new smaller window allowing the user to configure and add ftp servers. The ftp client configuration menu contains similar options than local ftp clients offer. Users can add and store multiple ftp servers, select the protocol, add sftp / ssh authentication and specify a starting local and remote directory.

The only difference is the absence of options that configure the ftp client itself, for example the number of simultaneous connections or file transfer limitations.

Once the ftp server has been added the ftp client can be used to connect to it. Users can now download, edit, rename or delete files while connected to the ftp server. A feature that is missing is chmod which can be used to configure access rights for files.

Any Client offers a quick and easy way to connect to ftp servers. It provides access to the basic feature set of ftp clients but lacks several advanced features that webmasters might need every now and then. Security sensitive users and those with important data on their servers might want to consider using a self hosted ftp server script instead of a third party service to reduce the security risks.

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An alternative to connecting to remote ftp servers with ftp programs is to mount the ftp server as a local drive on the computer system. NetDrive provides the means to do that.

The software comes with a clean interface that has several popular ftp servers preinstalled. New servers can be added by providing the IP, port, username, password and drive letter for that connection. There is also a setting to define when the ftp server or webdav server should be added as a drive letter. The options are to do that when the system starts or when NetDrive starts.

Once the remote ftp has been mounted it is possible to access the ftp like any other drive letter in Windows. It essentially means that no ftp software is needed to connect to the ftp server and that programs like Windows Explorer or equivalents can be used instead.

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Setting up an ftp server is actually not complicated at all. The process can be broken down in the following parts: Downloading the ftp server software, installing the software, configuring the ftp server and starting it. The biggest part will be the ftp server configuration where the ftp server admin has to share directories and add user accounts to the system.

Filezilla Server is an Open Source ftp server that can be used to setup a ftp server in Windows. A good advise would be to use the default parameters that are shown during ftp server setup. If you have followed the advice you should see a small window after installation that’s called Connect To Server. A click on OK should connect to the ftp server interface as an administrator.

FileZilla uses User Accounts and Groups to determine access rights of the ftp server. Groups can be used to configure settings for multiple users which are simply assigned to a group. The only thing that has to be done to get the ftp server up and running is to add at least one user account to the server.

This is done by clicking on Edit > Users in the top menu.

The first step is to click on the Add button on the right beneath users. Pick any username and leave the group setting as is.

The new user should now appear in the Users pane on the right side. Now check the Password box and enter a password for that user. You cannot leave that box empty unless you set the username to anonymous.

Now that we have created a first user and assigned a password to that user we need to setup the access rights for that user. A click on Shared Folders loads the menu where the ftp server administrator can enable access to local drives for the selected user.

A click on the Add button beneath Shared Folders will open the file browser in Windows. The first directory will be the Home directory of the user. The access rights are displayed on the right. The user can by default only download (read) files and list directories. If you want to enable file uploads you should create a specific directory for that purpose and set the access flags accordingly (write and create).

If you want to provide access to different hard drives you need to enable so called aliases. The ftp server will always display the home directory to the connected user with no option to switch to another drive.

The only way to provide access to multiple partitions and drives on the ftp server is to create aliases. They basically tell the ftp server to create an alias directory in the home directory that will point to the other partition or drive.

This can be done by right-clicking a folder that has been added to the shared folder list and selecting Edit Aliases from the menu. Now enter the full path of the alias directory. If your home ftp directory is located in d:\ and you want to add f:\ as another shared folder you need to pick an alias that uses the path d:\aliasfolder, for example d:\fshare. When a user connects to the ftp he will see the contents of drive d and the alias folder fshare in the directory structure that will display the contents of the f drive.

And that’s it. Congratulations, you setup an ftp server in a few minutes. The settings can be used to change various aspects of the server, including:

• Banning IP addresses
• Enabling logging
• Setting global speed limits
• Enabling compression
• Enabling SSL
• Setting a welcome message

Setting up a ftp server is not complicated. The most important security aspect is to always update the ftp server to the latest version and only enable the ftp server when needed.

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1. download filezilla server, install and run it.
   
2. create a folder on your hard drive, e.g. /ftp/
3. move the files you want to trade into it
4. you need to setup a user account so your friend may connect to the server, to do so select edit / users

• click on add, enter a name for the user, click ok
• enable password and enter one that your friend will be using
• click on shared folders, add and select the folder on your hard drive that you created
• default settings allow your friend to read (download) files and list directories and subdirectories.
• if you want him to upload files as well you have to give im write permission as well. You could setup a /ftp/upload/ dir for write and delete permission and all others only for read permission
• that´s it. To test if it´s working fire up your ftp client and connect using the settings you entered at the ftp server. All you need to do is send your friend the login information and your current IP.

You could tighten security by adding your friends IP to the allowed IP addresses and make the connection process more comfortable by using a dynamic dns service which would mean you would not have to broadcast your IP to your friend everytime it changes.

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