Installing Pure-FTPd on Centos and creating virtual users

FTP virtual user is a user that can upload file on behalf of system user. For example you have a OS user “pradono” and the home directory is /home/pradono, a virtual user “test1″ that is setup on behalf of “pradono”, can upload file to /home/pradono/test1 and the file uploaded will have the ownership as “pradono”.

1. Installing Pure-FTPd using yum

Let’s start by adding an additional CentOS repo

[root@prod1 ~]# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ [root@prod1 /etc/yum.repos.d]# wget http://centos.karan.org/kbsingh-CentOS-Extras.repo

And enable kbs-CentOS-Testing by editing /etc/yum.repos.d/kbsingh-CentOS-Extras.repo

[root@prod1 /etc/yum.repos.d]# nano -w kbsingh-CentOS-Extras.repo

Change enabled=0 to enabled=1

[...] [kbs-CentOS-Testing] name=CentOS.Karan.Org-EL$releasever - Testing gpgcheck=0 gpgkey=http://centos.karan.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-karan.org.txt enabled=1 baseurl=http://centos.karan.org/el$releasever/extras/testing/$basearch/RPMS/

Import the repo key

[root@prod1 /etc/yum.repos.d]# rpm --import http://centos.karan.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-karan.org.txt

Install pure-ftpd.

[root@prod1 /etc/yum.repos.d]# yum -y install pure-ftpd

2. Edit the Pure-FTPd config file

[root@prod1 /etc/yum.repos.d]# cd /etc/pure-ftpd/ [root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# nano -w pure-ftpd.conf

Make sure you have these options enabled

[...] # If you want simple Unix (/etc/passwd) authentication, uncomment this UnixAuthentication yes # If you want to log all client commands, set this to "yes". # This directive can be duplicated to also log server responses. VerboseLog yes # PureDB user database (see README.Virtual-Users) PureDB /etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.pdb # Automatically create home directories if they are missing CreateHomeDir yes

The CreateHomeDir option makes adding virtual users more easy by creating a user’s home directory upon login (if it doesn’t already exist).

3. Import OS users to Pure-FTPd FTP Users (Optional)

We can either import users with system-level accounts (defined in /etc/passwd) at once or create new users manually using pure-pw useradd. To import users that already exist on your system into the virtual user database, enter these commands:
The name has to be pureftpd.passwd. This creates pureftpd.passwd file.
pure-pw mkdb imports pureftpd.passwd to the puredb file, in this example /etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.pdb.

[root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# pure-pwconvert >> pureftpd.passwd [root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# pure-pw mkdb

Update: Just use UnixAuthentication yes in your pure-ftpd.conf file and you don’t need step 3 above.

4. Add a virtual user.

This adds a virtual user “test” to pureftpd.pass file

[root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# pure-pw useradd test -u doniking -g doniking -d /home/doniking/test Password:

Again, this imports the updated pureftpd.passwd file into a puredb file.

[root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# pure-pw mkdb

5. Testing.

We haven’t restarted pure-ftpd service yet until now. Let’s restart it.

[root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# service pure-ftpd restart Stopping pure-ftpd: [ OK ] Starting pure-ftpd: [ OK ]

Test the user

[root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# ftp localhost Connected to doniking.lan. 220---------- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [privsep] [TLS] ---------- 220-You are user number 2 of 50 allowed. 220-Local time is now 00:47. Server port: 21. 220-IPv6 connections are also welcome on this server. 220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity. 500 This security scheme is not implemented 500 This security scheme is not implemented KERBEROS_V4 rejected as an authentication type Name (localhost:root): test 331 User test OK. Password required Password: 230-User test has group access to: 500 230 OK. Current directory is / Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. ftp>

6. Notes.

- Every time you add a virtual user, run

[root@prod1 /etc/pure-ftpd]# pure-pw mkdb

to import pureftpd.passwd to pureftpd.pdb.
- If you want to enable the OS users to ftp, you don’t need to use pure-pwconvert command as others suggest. Simply enable

UnixAuthentication yes

in your /etc/pure-ftpd/pure-ftpd.conf config file.