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Bismark_The_2nd
Asked: 2025-03-21 22:56:07 +0800 CST

Setting up multiple FTP user on Ubuntu server

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I'm trying to set up a FTP server, and I've been following guides. They all only show how to set up one user, I need to have multiple users be able to access the same folder and pull files out of it. Am I able to set up one folder and jail multiple users to that folder?

I am using vsftpd. The users will be independent and need the ability to download files out of the folder without being able to write anything to that folder or leave it.

I have been following these guides:

https://documentation.ubuntu.com/server/how-to/networking/ftp/index.html

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-vsftpd-for-a-user-s-directory-on-ubuntu-20-04#step-1-installing-vsftpd

server

2 Answers

  1. From man vsftpd.conf:

    userlist_deny This option is examined if userlist_enable is activated. If you set this setting to NO, then users will be denied login unless they are explicitly listed in the file specified by userlist_file. When login is denied, the denial is issued before the user is asked for a password. Default: YES

    userlist_enable If enabled, vsftpd will load a list of usernames, from the filename given by userlist_file. If a user tries to log in using a name in this file, they will be denied before they are asked for a password. This may be useful in preventing cleartext passwords being transmitted. See also userlist_deny. Default: NO

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  2. Best Answer

    Following this guide

    https://documentation.ubuntu.com/server/how-to/networking/ftp/index.html

    I setup vsftpd and got it working with one user (user_a). But I had to set the owner of user_a's home directory to root and set the permissions of the directory to 755. This is because I wanted to be able to update the files in the directory, but I don't want any ftp users to be able to make any changes, they will only be able to see files and download them. Also, in the vsftpd.conf uncomment chroot_local_user=YES. This makes it to where the ftp users are locked in user_a's home directory and can not access the root directory.

    Then once that's done I did a reboot of the server. If you're unable to reboot your server restarting the vsftpd service should do the trick as well. Then I followed this guide on setting up virtual users.

    https://github.com/dagwieers/vsftpd/blob/master/EXAMPLE/VIRTUAL_USERS/README

    However I did not use berkeleydb. Berkeleydb has a lot of functions but the only relevant one is creating and managing .db files. If you already have berkeleydb or need it for other reasons following the guide is fine, but for me setting up berkeleydb was a lot of extra effort, so I used SQLite3 for .db creation using this guide.

    I had to run this to get db functionality

    # apt-get install db4.2-util

    and I used these here in the vsftpd.pam file because I didn't use berkeleydb for my .db files.

    auth required pam_userdb.so db=/etc/vsftpd/virtual-users
account required pam_userdb.so db=/etc/vsftpd/virtual-users
session required pam_loginuid.so

    Thank you to Bodo in the comments of this post for showing me the guide on github for virtual user creation.

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