Ubuntu 16.04: Install ProFTPD for FTP server

This article will describe installing ProFTPD for FTP server.

1 Install ProFTPD

Install ProFTPD package.

$ cat <<EOF | sudo debconf-set-selections
proftpd-basic shared/proftpd/inetd_or_standalone select standalone
EOF
$ sudo apt install -y proftpd

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

$ cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/proftpd/conf.d/anonymous.conf
<Anonymous ~ftp>
  User ftp
  Group nogroup
  UserAlias anonymous ftp
  DirFakeUser on ftp
  DirFakeGroup on ftp
  RequireValidShell off
  <Directory *>
    <Limit WRITE>
      DenyAll
    </Limit>
  </Directory>
</Anonymous>
EOF

Enable and restart ProFTPD.

$ sudo systemctl enable proftpd
$ sudo systemctl restart proftpd

Put file for anonymous user.

$ echo "anon" | sudo tee /srv/ftp/anon.txt

2 Access to ProFTPD

Access to ProFTPD with lftp.

$ sudo apt install -y lftp

Access to ProFTPD 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 ProFTPD 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 ftp      ftp             5 Aug  8 07:43 anon.txt
-rw-r--r--   1 ftp      ftp           170 Apr  5  2016 welcome.msg