ftp server
By Eric Maziade on Tuesday, June 21 2005, 13:45 - Open Source - Permalink
My next task was to set up an ftp server. vsftpd (very secure ftp daemon) was suggested to me, which sounded cool.
But I didn't understand fast enough how to configure it.
My local webmin setup talked about proftpd. So I say - hey, if I can get a somewhat more comprehensive configuration UI, that's what I'll do.
Turns out its configuration is pretty similar to vsftpd. Which make some kind of sense, since they both do the same thing.
I figured out how to make proftpd's authentication mechanism work with mysql (a nice user table which will enable me to make a nice end-user configuration interface later on).
And I also learned about .ftpaccess files. Which are a neat new thing to me.
See, I could - with a few simple lines of configuration script - give simple ftp access to an end-user and not allow them to see or modify any files I don't want them to (such as php code, for instance).
Yay!
This kinda stuff makes me happy.
Comments
Something you should put in your back pocket should someday you want to reuse your user table in mysql: pam_mysql.
Let's pretend you know nothing about PAM:
PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) is central to most distributions (I know Slackware doesn't use it, dunno about Gentoo) and is essentially an authentication system (like a simpler LDAP). A lot of unix programs that need credentials can be plugged into PAM (maybe it was an option of proftpd?). So now your needs are modest but maybe one day you'll want to offer SFTP and reuse the same credentials... essentially what you'd do is tell pam_mysql which column is user, which is pass, and smile.
That's very cool!
There is PAM in gentoo, of course. But I didn't really understand it properly and failed to use it properly. I'll most assuredly look into it now - and pam_mysql, of course!!