LinuxMint 18: Install vsftpd for FTP server

This article will describe installing vsftp for FTP server.

1 Install vsftpd

Install vsftpd package.

$ sudo apt install -y vsftpd

Enable upload by local user. Enable read by anonymous user. Disable upload by anonymous user.

$ cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/vsftpd.conf
listen=YES
local_enable=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
pam_service_name=vsftpd

# Enable upload by local user.
write_enable=YES

# Enable read by anonymous user (without username and password).
secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd/empty
anonymous_enable=YES
anon_root=/srv/ftp
allow_anon_ssl=YES
no_anon_password=YES
EOF

Create directory for anon_chroot.

$ sudo mkdir /srv/ftp
$ sudo chown nobody:nogroup /srv/ftp
$ echo "anon" | sudo tee /srv/ftp/anon.txt

Enable and restart vsftpd.

$ sudo systemctl enable vsftpd
$ sudo systemctl restart vsftpd

2 Access to vsftpd

Access to vsftpd with lftp.

$ sudo apt install -y lftp

Access to vsftpd with specifying user. You can specify password with -u <username>,<password>. Home directory is displayed. You can access directory and files of FTP server with using user permission.

$ lftp -u hiroom2 ftp-server.hiroom2.com
Password:
lftp hiroom2@ftp-server.hiroom2.com:~> pwd
ftp://hiroom2@ftp-server.hiroom2.com/%2Fhome/hiroom2
lftp hiroom2@ftp-server.hiroom2.com:~> ls /
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            4096 Jul 29 07:12 bin
drwxr-xr-x    4 0        0            1024 Aug 05 12:16 boot
drwxrwxr-x    2 0        0            4096 Oct 09  2016 cdrom
-rw-------    1 0        0        17711104 Jan 21  2017 core
drwxr-xr-x   21 0        0            4020 Aug 06 01:22 dev
drwxr-xr-x  133 0        0           12288 Aug 06 01:22 etc
drwxr-xr-x    4 0        0            4096 Aug 06 01:22 home
<snip>

Not specifying user uses anonymous user. The directory which is set to anon_root is displayed. Anonymous user cannot access upper directory because vsftpd uses chroot.

$ lftp ftp-server.hiroom2.com
lftp ftp-server.hiroom2.com:~> pwd
ftp://ftp-server.hiroom2.com
lftp ftp-server.hiroom2.com:~> ls /
-rw-r--r--    1 0        0               5 Aug 06 01:22 anon.txt