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Install FTP service on CentOS 6 – vsftpd

  • Updated

 

The first two letters of vsftpd stand for "very secure" and the program was built to have strongest protection against possible FTP vulnerabilities.

 

Install vsftpd

  1. Update our packages with the following command:

  yum -y update

  1. Install vsftpd and any required packages with one of the following commands:

sudo yum install vsftpd

  1. Install the FTP client, so that we can connect to an FTP server:

sudo yum install ftp

 

 

 

Configure vsftpd

  1. Once VSFTP is installed, you can adjust the configuration. Open up the configuration file:

sudo vi /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf

  1. Change the Anonymous_enable to No:

anonymous_enable = NO

You need to use the letter “i” to insert/edit text, navigating with your keyboard arrows.

Prior to this change, vsftpd allowed anonymous, unidentified users to access the server files. This is useful if you are seeking to distribute information widely, but may be considered a serious security issue in most other cases.

  1. Set the local_enable option to yes.

local_enable = YES

  1. Set chroot_local_user to Yes. When this line is set to Yes, all the local users will be jailed within their chroot and will be denied access to any other part of the server.

chroot_local_user=YES

  1. Finish up by restarting vsftpd

sudo service vsftpd restart

  1. In order to ensure that vsftpd runs at boot running chkconfig:

chkconfig vsftpd on

 

 

 

Access the FTP server

You can reach an FTP server in the browser by typing the domain name into the address bar and logging in with the appropriate ID. Keep in mind, you will only be able to access the user's home directory.

ftp://example.com

Alternatively, you can reach the FTP server through the command line by typing:

 ftp example.com

Then you can use the word, "exit," to get out of the FTP shell.

 

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