How to Install and Configure vsftpd on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Install and Configure vsftpd on Ubuntu

vsftpd, (or very secure FTP daemon),is an FTP server for Unix-like systems, including Linux. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It supports IPv6 and SSL.

vsftpd supports explicit (since 2.0.0) and implicit (since 2.1.0) FTPS.

vsftpd is the default FTP server in the Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, NimbleX, Slackware and RHEL Linux distributions.

Install vsftpd

First, you’ll follow a simple best practice: ensuring the list of available packages is up to date before installing anything new.

[root@hackthesec]# apt-get update

Then let’s install vsftpd and any required packages:

[root@hackthesec]# apt-get -y install vsftpd

Configure vsftpd

Let’s edit the configuration file for vsftpd:

[root@hackthesec]# vim /etc/vsftpd.conf

Disallow anonymous, unidentified users to access files via FTP; change the anonymous_enable setting to NO:

anonymous_enable=NO

Allow local uses to login by changing the local_enable setting to YES:

local_enable=YES

If you want local user to be able to write to a directory, then change the write_enable setting to YES:

write_enable=YES

Local users will be ‘chroot jailed’ and they will be denied access to any other part of the server; change the chroot_local_user setting to YES:

chroot_local_user=YES

Exit and save the file with the command :wq

Restart the vsftpd service:

service vsftpd restart

Configure the User’s Home Directory

With certain version of vsftpd you may receive the following error: 500 OOPS: vsftpd: refusing to run with writable root inside chroot().

Create a new directory for the user receiving the error (testuser in this case) that is a subdirectory of their home directory (/home/testuser ). For example:

Fix permissions for testuser  home directory:

chmod a-w /home/testuser/

Make a new directory for uploading files:

mkdir /home/testuser/testuser
chown testuser:testuser/home/testuser/testuser/

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