The configuration of ftp server and client

Posted 2021-01-17 achaohz

This is the first article since April in this year. This is also the first article since I joined Microstrategy.

1 Environment

Server: CentOS release 6.8(Final)
Client: macOS 10.13.6

2 Configuration of ftp server

Install vsftpd package

yum install vsftpd

Make sure the following two line is in the file /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf.

userlist_enable=YES
userlist_deny=NO

For example, root is the username you want login with.
Make sure root is the list of users who can access the server by the way of ftp. The list is in the file/etc/vsftpd/user_list.
Here is my user list.

# vsftpd userlist
# If userlist_deny=NO, only allow users in this file
# If userlist_deny=YES (default), never allow users in this file, and
# do not even prompt for a password.
# Note that the default vsftpd pam config also checks /etc/vsftpd/ftpusers
# for users that are denied.
root
bin
daemon
adm
lp
sync
shutdown
halt
mail
news
uucp
operator
games
nobody

You see, root is in the list.

There is another list of users (in the file /etc/vsftpd/ftpuser) who are not allowed to access the server by the way of ftp. It seems that the priority of this list is higher than that of /etc/vsftpd/user_list.

# Users that are not allowed to login via ftp
# root
bin
daemon
adm
lp
sync
shutdown
halt
mail
news
uucp
operator
games
nobody

Comment root with # if root appears in this file.

Now, start the vsftpd service

service vsftpd start

Remember to restart the service if you update any configuration of vsftpd

3 Configuration of client

ftp command is not available in macOS now. So lftp command is recommended.

brew install lftp

Connect the server:

lftp  -p 21 -u [username] [host of server]

21 is the default port of your ftp service on your server listening.
put is the command you transfer file from client to server. You can also pull files from server with get

lftp [email protected]:~> put a
lftp [email protected]:~> get a

You can check the manual page of lftp for more usage.