Setting up your own FTP server (Ubuntu)

Some rights reserved by Blake Patterson

Only after i did it i learnt, things aren't as difficult as they seem to be. I recently got a chance to set up my own FTP server. Not only that, i also made people use it. That was a real win.

So here's the thing, Due to some technical problems my company's FTP server was non-functional or i would say, it didn't give the results as per expectations. So i started looking for alternatives. Since the QA team tests mostly on a Windows machine i was looking for a Windows FTP server setup. I am not sure if any FTP server setup software is available for free, but after some research i only found some paid FTP server softwares for Windows which i didn't really want.

The project requirement was such that the, the application will be continuosly monitoring the FTP server. A cronjob will be setup which will look for some XML files in the FTP servers xyz directory. The found XMLs will be auto-ingested into the application by a POST and the Database will be updated accordingly.

So i needed an FTP. Obviously, i was looking for a free one. Ubuntu came for my rescue. I would rather say, i got another reason for why i prefer Linux over Windows.

vsftpd - Very Secure File Transfer Protocol Daemon

vsftpd is an ftp server for Linux and Unix machines distributed under GNU public license. It supports almost all Linux systems and it is fairly easy to install as well. You can customize a welcome message for people logging in to your server. And all the required changes just needs to be done in a configuration text file. That was awesome!!!

More about vsftpd can be read from Wikipedia

Steps to install and have your own vsftpd

I would say 4 simple steps (on Ubuntu Linux) and you have you FTP server started.

1. sudo apt-get install vsftpd
2. Open the configuration text file vsftpd.conf in your favorite editor  "vim /etc/vsftpd.conf"
3. Make the required changes and save the file (Changes are discussed below)
4. Start the vsftpd service by sudo service vsftpd start OR /etc/init.d/vsftpd start

You have your own FTP server setup.
 Important changes in the configuration file:

listen=YES
# Allow anonymous FTP? (Beware - allowed by default if you comment this out).
anonymous_enable=YES
# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES
# Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command.
write_enable=YES
# Directory which you want to be the root FTP directory
local_root=/srv/ftp/
  # Activate directory messages - messages given to remote users when they
 # go into a certain directory.
 dirmessage_enable=YES
  # If enabled, vsftpd will display directory listings with the time
 # in  your  local  time  zone.  The default is to display GMT. The
 # times returned by the MDTM FTP command are also affected by this
 # option.
 use_localtime=YES
  # Activate logging of uploads/downloads.
 xferlog_enable=YES
  # Make sure PORT transfer connections originate from port 20 (ftp-data).
  connect_from_port_20=YES
 # You may fully customise the login banner string:
 ftpd_banner=Welcome to Roshan's FTP service.
 # This option should be the name of a directory which is empty.  Also, the
 # directory should not be writable by the ftp user. This directory is used
 # as a secure chroot() jail at times vsftpd does not require filesystem
 # access.
 secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd/empty
 # This string is the name of the PAM service vsftpd will use.
 pam_service_name=vsftpd
 # This option specifies the location of the RSA certificate to use for SSL
 # encrypted connections.
 rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/private/vsftpd.pem

This is all you need to do to have a personal FTP.

To login to your ftp server you need to do the following in a Linux or Windows Terminal.

ftp <your_ip_addres>
Username: <for_ur_machine>
Password: <for_ur_machine>
 logged in

all the transfer operations can now be performed