FTP Server on Linux using VSFTPD

For the FTP we both researched on Google, there are lots of FTP programs to choose from some based purely on command line, others with GUI interfaces. An FTP program that seemed to crop up a lot in forums and searches was VSFTPD, the links we found suggested it is easy to setup and offers a good secure system.

VSFTPD stands for Very Sercure FTP Daemon, it is free and licensed under General Public License. The current release is version 3.0.0, and the program is based around command line entry so no GUI.

To install VSFTPD we followed the tutorial located here https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-vsftpd-on-ubuntu-12-04

To install the program you simply need to type sudo apt-get install vsftpd in the terminal, the program wil download and install then requires setting up.

The setup is a little more involved as there is an extensive list of parameters that can be tweaked, these change various attributes from folder permissions, anonymous access to logging server access details. Adjust these parameters is carried out by editing a file called vsftpd.conf, this file is located here /etc/vsftpd.conf and just requires a text editor for editing. A full list of the programs parameters can be found https://security.appspot.com/vsftpd/vsftpd_conf.html

It is important to note once the vsftpd.conf file has been changed in anyway, you need to restart the program for the changes to take effect with the following command sudo service vsftpd restart

After we followed the tutorial we need to ensure the FTP was running and we could connect, to do this we connected the server to the switch provided, then connected our laptops to the switch as well. We both opened FileZilla and typed in the IP address of the server, followed by the user name and password details. We connected successfully via FileZilla on both a Linux and Windows machine, and as a further test we used the terminal to on one of the laptops to also access the ftp server. There are 3 screen captures below showing our connections to the ftp server.