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Accepted
Will Martin
Asked: 2012-02-09 15:51:07 +0800 CST

Can I configure VSFTPD to listen only to localhost?

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I have a legacy app that needs FTP and cannot do SFTP.

My solution is:

  • put an FTP server in place using VSFTPD
  • configure the firewall to accept port 21 connections only from localhost
  • Set up an SSH connection from the client with the legacy app
  • Tunnel the FTP through SSH

I'm wondering though if I can configure VSFTPD to ignore connections from anywhere but localhost on its own, in addition to the firewall. Belt and bracers both.

ftp ssh vsftpd ssh-tunnel sftp

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Yes. Configure the vsftp server to listen only on 127.0.0.1: this can be done in the vsftp.conf file:

    listen_address=127.0.0.1

    To use this parameter, the server needs to be in standalone mode:

    listen=yes

    If you want to use IPv6, use these entries instead:

    listen_ipv6=yes
listen_address6=::1

    This is the same as the first, but uses IPv6.

    You'll almost certainly have to restart to make this work.

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