Starting vsftpd

The methodologies vary depending on the variant of Linux you are using as you’ll see next.

Fedora / CentOS / RedHat

With these flavors of Linux you can use the chkconfig command to get vsftpd configured to start at boot:

[root@bigboy tmp]# chkconfig vsftpd on

To start, stop, and restart vsftpd after booting use the service command:

[root@bigboy tmp]# service vsftpd start
[root@bigboy tmp]# service vsftpd stop
[root@bigboy tmp]# service vsftpd restart

To determine whether vsftpd is running you can issue either of these two commands. The first will give a status message. The second will return the process ID numbers of the vsftpd daemons.

[root@bigboy tmp]# service vsftpd status
[root@bigboy tmp]# pgrep spam

Note: Remember to run the chkconfig command at least once to ensure vsftpd starts automatically on your next reboot.

Ubuntu / Debian

Try installing the sysv-rc-conf and sysvinit-utils DEB packages as they provide commands that simplify the process.

You can use the sysv-rc-conf command to get vsftpd configured to start at boot:

user@ubuntu:~$ sudo sysv-rc-conf vsftpd on

To start, stop, and restart vsftpd after booting the service command is the same:

user@ubuntu:~$ sudo service vsftpd start
user@ubuntu:~$ sudo service vsftpd stop
user@ubuntu:~$ sudo service vsftpd restart

To determine whether vsftpd is running you can issue either of these two commands. The first will give a status message. The second will return the process ID numbers of the vsftpd daemons.

user@ubuntu:~$ sudo service vsftpd status
user@ubuntu:~$ pgrep vsftpd

Note: Remember to run the sysv-rc-conf command at least once to ensure vsftpd starts automatically on your next reboot.

Testing the Status of VSFTPD

You can always test whether the VSFTPD process is running by using the netstat -a command which lists all the TCP and UDP ports on which the server is listening for traffic. This example shows the expected output.

[root@bigboy root]# netstat -a | grep ftp
tcp        0        0        *:ftp         *:*        LISTEN
[root@bigboy root]#

If VSFTPD wasn’t running, there would be no output at all.

The vsftpd.conf File

VSFTPD only reads the contents of its vsftpd.conf configuration file only when it starts, so you’ll have to restart VSFTPD each time you edit the file in order for the changes to take effect. The file may be located in either the /etc or the /etc/vsftpd directories depending on your Linux distribution.

This file uses a number of default settings you need to know about.

• VSFTPD runs as an anonymous FTP server. Unless you want any remote user to log into to your default FTP directory using a username of anonymous and a password that’s the same as their email address, I would suggest turning this off. The configuration file’s anonymous_enable directive can be set to no to disable this feature. You’ll also need to simultaneously enable local users to be able to log in by removing the comment symbol (#) before the local_enable instruction.
• If you enable anonymous FTP with VSFTPD, remember to define the root directory that visitors will visit. This is done with the anon_root directive.

anon_root=/data/directory

• VSFTPD allows only anonymous FTP downloads to remote users, not uploads from them. This can be changed by modifying the anon_upload_enable directive shown later.
• VSFTPD doesn’t allow anonymous users to create directories on your FTP server. You can change this by modifying the anon_mkdir_write_enable directive.
• VSFTPD logs FTP access to the /var/log/vsftpd.log log file. You can change this by modifying the xferlog_file directive.
• By default VSFTPD expects files for anonymous FTP to be placed in the /var/ftp directory. You can change this by modifying the anon_root directive. There is always the risk with anonymous FTP that users will discover a way to write files to your anonymous FTP directory. You run the risk of filling up your /var partition if you use the default setting. It is best to make the anonymous FTP directory reside in its own dedicated partition.

The configuration file is fairly straight forward as you can see in the snippet below where we enable anonymous FTP and individual accounts simultaneously.

# Allow anonymous FTP?
anonymous_enable=YES
...
# The directory which vsftpd will try to change
# into after an anonymous login. (Default = /var/ftp)
anon_root=/data/directory
...
# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES
...
# Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command.
# (Needed even if you want local users to be able to upload files)
write_enable=YES
...
# Uncomment to allow the anonymous FTP user to upload files. This only
# has an effect if global write enable is activated. Also, you will
# obviously need to create a directory writable by the FTP user.
#anon_upload_enable=YES
...
# Uncomment this if you want the anonymous FTP user to be able to create
# new directories.
#anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES
...
# Activate logging of uploads/downloads.
xferlog_enable=YES
...
# You may override where the log file goes if you like.
# The default is shown below.
xferlog_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log
...

To activate or deactivate a feature, remove or add the # at the beginning of the appropriate line.

Other vsftpd.conf Options

There are many other options you can add to this file:

• Limiting the maximum number of client connections (max_clients)
• Limiting the number of connections by source IP address (max_per_ip)
• The maximum rate of data transfer per anonymous login. (anon_max_rate)
• The maximum rate of data transfer per non-anonymous login. (local_max_rate)

Descriptions on this and more can be found in the vsftpd.conf man pages.

FTP Users with to a Shared Directory

In this example, anonymous FTP is not desired, but a group of trusted users need to have read only access to a directory for downloading files. Here are the steps:

1) Disable anonymous FTP. Comment out the anonymous_enable line in the vsftpd.conf file like this:

# Allow anonymous FTP?
anonymous_enable=NO

2) Enable individual logins by making sure you have the local_enable line uncommented in the vsftpd.conf file like this:

# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES

3) Start VSFTP.

[root@bigboy tmp]# service vsftpd start

4) Create a user group and shared directory. In this case, use /home/ftp-users and a user group name of ftp-users for the remote users

[root@bigboy tmp]# groupadd ftp-users
[root@bigboy tmp]# mkdir /home/ftp-docs

5) Make the directory accessible to the ftp-users group.

[root@bigboy tmp]# chmod 750 /home/ftp-docs
[root@bigboy tmp]# chown root:ftp-users /home/ftp-docs

6) Add users, and make their default directory /home/ftp-docs

[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user1
[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user2
[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user3
[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user4
[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user1
[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user2
[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user3
[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user4

7) Copy files to be downloaded by your users into the /home/ftp-docs directory

8) Change the permissions of the files in the /home/ftp-docs directory for read only access by the group

[root@bigboy tmp]# chown root:ftp-users /home/ftp-docs/*
[root@bigboy tmp]# chmod 740 /home/ftp-docs/*

Users should now be able to log in via FTP to the server using their new usernames and passwords. If you absolutely don’t want any FTP users to be able to write to any directory, then you should set the write_enable line in your vsftpd.conf file to no:

write_enable = NO

Remember, you must restart VSFTPD for the configuration file changes to take effect.

Sample Login Session To Test Functionality

Here is a simple test procedure you can use to make sure everything is working correctly:

1) Check for the presence of a test file on the ftp client server.

[root@smallfry tmp]# ll
total 1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 4 09:08 testfile
[root@smallfry tmp]#

2) Connect to bigboy via FTP

[root@smallfry tmp]# ftp 192.168.1.100
Connected to 192.168.1.100 (192.168.1.100)
220 ready, dude (vsFTPd 1.1.0: beat me, break me)
Name (192.168.1.100:root): user1
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful. Have fun.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>

Thanks to : http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/wiki/index.php/Quick_HOWTO_:_Ch15_:_Linux_FTP_Server_Setup