An Ultimate Guide to Setting Up FTP Server to Allow Anonymous Logins - Part 4

Testing the FTP Server in Linux

We will create a regular PDF file (in this case, the PDF version of the vsftpd.conf manpage) in /storage/ftp.

Note that you may need to install the ghostcript package (which provides ps2pdf) separately, or use another file of your choice:

# man -t vsftpd.conf | ps2pdf - /storage/ftp/vstpd.conf.pdf

To test, we will use both a web browser (by going to ftp://Your_IP_here) and using the command line client (ftp). Let’s see what happens when we enter that FTP address in our browser:

FTP Web Directory Browsing

As you can see, the PDF file we saved earlier in /storage/ftp is available for you to download.

On the command line, type:

# ftp localhost

And enter anonymous as the user name. You should not be prompted for your password:

Verify FTP Connection

To retrieve files using the command line, use the get command followed by the filename, like so:

# get vsftpd.conf.pdf

and you’re good to go.

Summary

In this guide we have explained how to properly set up a FTP and use it to allow anonymous logins. You can also follow the instructions given to disable such logins and only allow local users to authenticate using their system credentials (not illustrated in this article since it is not required on the exam).

If you run into any issues, please share with us the output of the following command, which will stripe the configuration file from commented and empty lines, and we will be more than glad to take a look:

# grep -Eiv '(^$|^#)' /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf

Mine is as below (note that there are other configuration directives that we did not cover in this article as they are set by default, so no change was required at our side):

local_enable=NO
write_enable=NO
local_umask=022
dirmessage_enable=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
xferlog_std_format=YES
ftpd_banner=This is a test FTP server brought to you by Tecmint.com
listen=YES
listen_ipv6=NO
pam_service_name=vsftpd
userlist_enable=YES
tcp_wrappers=YES
anon_max_rate=10240
local_max_rate=20480
max_per_ip=5
anon_root=/storage/ftp
no_anon_password=YES
allow_writeable_chroot=YES
pasv_enable=YES
pasv_min_port=15000
pasv_max_port=15500

Particularly, this directive

xferlog_enable=YES

will enable the transfer log in /var/log/xferlog. Make sure you look in that file while troubleshooting.

Additionally, feel free to drop us a note using the comment form below if you have questions or any comments about this article.

Become a Linux Certified System Administrator Pages: 1 2 3 4