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wouter205
Asked: 2024-04-30 15:18:08 +0800 CST

OOPS: cannot read user list file:/etc/vsftpd.user_list error with VSFTP using MySQL as user backend

  • 772

I want to set up a VSFTP server in Ubuntu 22.04.4 with MySQL as a backend to store the users.

I've used this guide to set it up (it's for CentOS but except for the part on pam_mysql.so it's the applicable to Ubuntu).

Here is my setup:

  • /etc/vsftpd.conf
anonymous_enable=NO
pasv_addr_resolve=YES
pasv_address=ftp.company.com
pasv_min_port=40000
pasv_max_port=41000

local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
local_umask=022
dirmessage_enable=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES

nopriv_user=vsftpd
chroot_local_user=YES
listen=YES
pam_service_name=vsftpd
userlist_enable=YES
tcp_wrappers=YES
guest_enable=YES
guest_username=vsftpd
local_root=/home/vsftpd/$USER
user_sub_token=$USER
virtual_use_local_privs=YES
#user_config_dir=/etc/vsftpd/vsftpd_user_conf
allow_writeable_chroot=YES
pasv_enable=YES
  • /etc/pam.d/vsftpd
#%PAM-1.0
session       optional        pam_keyinit.so       force revoke
auth required pam_mysql.so user=vsftpd passwd=mypassword  host=localhost db=vsftpd table=accounts usercolumn=username   passwdcolumn=pass crypt=3
account required pam_mysql.so user=vsftpd passwd=mypassword host=localhost db=vsftpd table=accounts usercolumn=username  passwdcolumn=pass crypt=3
  • MySQL accounts table
mysql> select * from accounts;
+----+-----------------------------------+----------------------------------+
| id | username                          | pass                             |
+----+-----------------------------------+----------------------------------+
|  1 | [email protected]                  | [passwordhash]                   |
+----+-----------------------------------+----------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

On a local test server in virtualbox & all is working fine, however when I use the same configuration on the production server, I got this error upon connecting to the FTP server with winSCP:

OOPS: cannot read user list file:/etc/vsftpd.user_list

So apparently vsftp is not using the mysql connection to retrieve the users but is looking for a userlist file which is missing off course.

So far I've checked the following:

  • Verified libpam-mysql & mysql-client is installed
  • Make sure I'm able to connect to mysql db using the vsftpd credentials
  • Disabled iptables so this won't interfere with the connection to the database

But so far I haven't been able to solve this problem. The frustrating bit is that It's working on my virtualbox instance but I cannot see any difference between this instance & the production instance.

How can I troubleshoot the connection between vsftpd & MySQL please?

My production environment:

  • Ubuntu 22.04.4
  • MySQL 8.0.36
  • vsftpd 3.0.5
  • iptables v1.8.7
mysql

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Upon further investigation I've noticed the following error in /var/log/auth.log

    pam_mysql - MySQL error (Access denied for user 'vsftpd'@'localhost' (using password: YES))

    I I've tought, vsftpd cannot connect to the mysql database. I think I've solved it by creating a new user: vsftpd_user & new database vsftpd_db and recreating the grants & tables for vsftpd. I did not have any further problems connecting vsftpd to mysql in this way so probably there was some confusion by using the same name for db/user.

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