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Posted by Arjun Shankar at 14:08 hr 01/04/2006.
vsftpd: Short n Sweet
We use vsftpd for hosting our ftp server, and it only makes sense that there should be a tutorial for this too.. Though I had talked about ProFTPD before, this one is simpler, easier, and faster, with the disadvantage of having lesser choice in configuring things.
Quickly getting down to business, synaptic/apt/yum cultists get vsftpd from your repository. Others install from source, unless ofcourse, it is already there, and fire up a nice text editor as root. Open the config file. The one for a default RHEL install (which is what GLUG uses, by the way) is at /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf. Check your man page for where yours should be.
Now check out the config file, it is more or less going to be like this: vsftpd.conf. If its blank, copy mine in.
Notice that local_enable is set to NO. So that only anonymous access is allowed. write_enable is also set to NO (for obvious reasons ;)). Most of the opions are self explanatory. You can set ftpd_banner to some nice text you want to show on login.
Now the last three lines in my config file. "no_anon_password=YES", this means that anonymous users (like a browser) wont be asked for a password. It doesn't matter right? "listen=YES" makes sure that the server runs as standalone (and not through inetd or xinetd), this is preferable for performance reasons (someone told me this, not sure myself). I have set "anon_root" to the directory that I want to allow FTP access to, for the anonymous users (who also happen to be the only kind of users for our server).
There are options to limit download speeds (cant let them have all of your resources can you? :)) Check out the man page. It talks about these also.
Thats it! Save the file, RHEL/Fedora users hit these lines in a terminal as root:
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service vsftpd start
chkconfig vsftp on
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Others do the equivalent, to make sure your service starts, and starts each time you boot.
Enjoy!
Our vsftpd server, as seen from a browser.Posted by Arjun Shankar at 14:00 hr 10/04/2006.