vsftpd Install questions....

[deltaf508]

I seem to be having a problem getting this install/compile to work properly. Maybe someone can give me some pointers here. I would consider myself a Linux Newbie, but I have a good handle on a lot of the linux basics.

I want to set up a Linux FTP server for some of my Friends and Family. I'm running "Damn Small Linux" on a AMD K6-2 450 w/ 212 MB RAM. I chose this distrobution because it seemed to run relatively smooth with th hardware that I am working with. It is a "Live" Distro, but installing it onto a Hard drive (which I have done) is a snap. It picked everything up (sound, NIC, etc.) and I have even successfully gotten SAMBA working and other PC can connect to it.

Anyway, I'm wanting to run VSFTPD because I've heard some good reviews about it from people on this board and It seems like it will work for me. I'm using the install instructions I found here at this sitehttp://www.vsftpdrocks.org/source/ to install from the source (.tar.gz) I am mildly familiar with installing stuff in this fashion - like I said I was able to get Samba to work alright. My problem is that I'm getting hung up on "Step 3" of the instructions. When I type "make" into the terminal window it returns with:

bash: make: command not found

I am running in the terminal window as root (not sure if I'm supposed to or not - maybe someone can clarify this for me) and I downloaded the file "vsftpd-1.2.1.tar.gz" into the /tmp folder and uncompressed it there. Step 1 & 2 went fine.

Can someone help me out?

Thanks,

Gary

[jkrohn]

Well you either need to install make or is just that make is not in your path

There really is little way to query your packages as your distro has removed the dpkg database to save space.

You could try updatedb and locate, but that is probably gone as well. As a result it is probably best just to install a new make.
Grab it form here
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/make/make-3.80.tar.gz

Jkrohn

[jkrohn]

Honestly, I would NOT reccomend running Damn Small Linux as your server. It is missing MANY packages that you will want due to the fact that it is a massive 33MB or so.

As a result you have no development tools (I would be suprised if make actually works), no development libraries, probably little to no security tools.

With a HD, you are best off using a distro meant for a HD. You really are better off installing any distro with only the packages you want. It will probably save you trouble down the road.

Just my 2 cents.
Jkrohn

[SpookyEddy]

It looks like you can simply run dpkg-restore and then install the vsftpd binary via apt, instructions are on the DSL home page. Seems much easier to me than trying to build it from source and also avoids cluttering a server install up with development tools, but as ever YMMV.

Regards

ed

[jkrohn]

Or of course you can be cool like eddy Really though, who wants that

Jkrohn

[deltaf508]

Thanks for all the input.

Here's what I tried:

#dpkg-restore
#apt-get install vsftpd

Here's what I got back:

.
. (some download information here)
.
(upacking database ....)
unpacking vsftpd (from .......)
setting up vsftpd (1.0.0-2 .....)

#

Now what do I do? This is the same way I set up SAMBA and it lauched me straight into a routine that configures the "smb.conf" file through "debconf". I still don't think vsftpd is installed as there is no file named /usr/local/sbin/vsftpd

jkrohn, thanks for your advice I was thinking about that prior to this install and this may not be the distro that I ultimately end up using. I'm mostly doing this as a learning experience. This FTP server will only be up for at most a Few hours a week while I learn this whole process and While some friends/family are uploading/downloading files. I chose this distro to start out with because really it has been the easiest to set up out of the box than a lot of others that I have tried. I want to get a good handle on setting this kind of stuff up before I install it onto a machine that may be the finalized product and take longer to setup. Do you think it's not even worth messing with and go straight to a distro that may have more flexibility?

What would you recommend for running on a AMD K6-2 450 with 212 MB of RAM? I chose DSL because it runs pretty fast even on this little machine.

Thanks,

Gary

[SpookyEddy]

Assuming its using the standard debian package and default installation locations then the vsftpd binary will end up in "/usr/sbin/" not "/usr/local/sbin/". I tend to run vsftpd via inetd but it will run as a stand alone daemon, if you go the inetd approach then just stick teh following line in your "/etc/inetd.conf" and do a kill -HUP on its pid.

ftp             stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  /usr/sbin/vsftpd

The default configuration file is "/etc/vsftpd.conf" and fairly well commented (you can also review a summary of various configuration options on the vsftpd web site).

Now that you have installed DSL to disk and restored the apt functionality I would say you are really just running a customised debian installation, should be fine as a server.

Regards

ed

[deltaf508]

SpookyEddy,

Thanks so much for your help. I think I'm almost there. I've got the statment in inetd.conf I don't know how to find and kill a specific PID so I'm typing the command "killall inetd" then to restart it I type "inetd" Don't know if that is legit or not but it works.

So when I try to test the ftp by typing

#ftp localhost

This is what I get:

Connected to box.
500 OOPS: vsftpd: cannot find user specified in 'tunable_ftp_username'
ftp>

At this point I have to type 'quit' to get out of the ftp prompt. Is there a user config file somewhere? I could find no 'tunable_ftp_username' file anywhere.

Can you tell me what I might need to tweak next.

Also It looks like I've installed version 1.0.0 of vsftpd from the site version 1.2.1 is listed would this be a hard change to do later. I just want to get this one working first however,

Thanks so much for your help,

Gary

[SpookyEddy]

For future reference to find the pid of inetd simply type...

ps ax | grep inetd

This should return a line that looks a bit like this...

627 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/inetd

The first number is the process id that inetd is running under. To make inetd reread its config without having to stop and then start it you can just send it the HUP signal like this (where you replace <pid> with the id you just found)...

kill -HUP <pid>

Anyway, it looks like you have it working now but have some kind of configuration issue. Can you post the contents of your /etc/vsftpd.conf please, I am fairly sure its something simple. If I was to hazzard a guess I would say that you are missing the user name that vsftpd is attempting to provide anonymous access under.

I am running debian unstable and have vsftpd version 1.2.1 installed, looks like DSL is using an older package archive (perhaps debian stable or testing).

Regards

ed

[deltaf508]

SpookyEddy,

Thanks for all your help so far I really do appreciate it. So here's where I'm at now. I've copied the contents of my 'vsftp.conf' file here for you. I haven't changed a lot in it. Basically I've been able to get rid of the error message by setting 'anonymous_enable=NO' and 'local_enable=YES' Doing it this way it does not give me a error message and it asks me for a login and Password. The only way I have been able to login successully to 'ftp localhost' so far to test the setup is to put in "root" with my root password. Perhaps this is becuase I do not have any linux users set up yet? I'm not sure how vsftpd users correllate with the linux system users. Maybe you can clarify this for me.

I did try to set up a "test" user in my system using the 'useradd' command. Here is what I tried:

useradd -pxxxx -d/home/athlonxp -m athlonxp

As I see it I should have created a user named "athlonxp" with a password of "xxxx" and a home directory of /home/athlonxp as denoted by the -m option. You can tell me if this is correct or not. So when I try to log into 'ftp localhost' with my user I just created I still cannot login. I get an error message of:

#ftp localhost
connected to box.
220 ready, dude (vsftpd ....)
Name (localhost:damnsmall): athlonxp
331 please specify the password:
530 Login Incorrect.
Login Failed.
ftp>

But, here's what happens when I try to login as root:

#ftp localhost
connected to box.
220 ready, dude (vsftpd ....)
Name (localhost:damnsmall): root
331 please specify the password:
230 login successful. have fun.
remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>

Anyway, I appreciate your time in helping me out. Your suggestions are greatly apprciatted. You have been most helpful so far. I really think I am close I just have to figure out how these users work and then how the permissions and shares work when my users log in. I don't want them to have free reign of the place want to have a designated directory where I will put the files in.

I did set the ftp_username=anon at the bottom, but I currently have it commented out as I think it refers to anonymous logins (correct?) I'd like to know how this works, but most likely will stick with having 'virtual users' (I think that is how I'm reading everything so far right) set up to login. What makes a virtual user different than a system user?

So what next? Any suggestions, Thanks again.

Gary

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# Example config file /etc/vsftpd.conf
#
# The default compiled in settings are very paranoid. This sample file
# loosens things up a bit, to make the ftp daemon more usable.
#
# Allow anonymous FTP?
anonymous_enable=NO
#
# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES
#
# Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command.
#write_enable=YES
#
# Default umask for local users is 077. You may wish to change this to 022,
# if your users expect that (022 is used by most other ftpd's)
#local_umask=022
#
# Uncomment this to allow the anonymous FTP user to upload files. This only
# has an effect if the above global write enable is activated. Also, you will
# obviously need to create a directory writable by the FTP user.
#anon_upload_enable=YES
#
# Uncomment this if you want the anonymous FTP user to be able to create
# new directories.
#anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES
#
# Activate directory messages - messages given to remote users when they
# go into a certain directory.
dirmessage_enable=YES
#
# Activate logging of uploads/downloads.
xferlog_enable=YES
#
# Make sure PORT transfer connections originate from port 20 (ftp-data).
connect_from_port_20=YES
#
# If you want, you can arrange for uploaded anonymous files to be owned by
# a different user. Note! Using "root" for uploaded files is not
# recommended!
#chown_uploads=YES
#chown_username=whoever
#
# You may override where the log file goes if you like. The default is shown
# below.
#xferlog_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log
#
# If you want, you can have your log file in standard ftpd xferlog format
#xferlog_std_format=YES
#
# You may change the default value for timing out an idle session.
#idle_session_timeout=600
#
# You may change the default value for timing out a data connection.
#data_connection_timeout=120
#
# It is recommended that you define on your system a unique user which the
# ftp server can use as a totally isolated and unprivileged user.
#nopriv_user=ftpsecure
#
# Enable this and the server will recognise asynchronous ABOR requests. Not
# recommended for security (the code is non-trivial). Not enabling it,
# however, may confuse older FTP clients.
#async_abor_enable=YES
#
# By default the server will pretend to allow ASCII mode but in fact ignore
# the request. Turn on the below options to have the server actually do ASCII
# mangling on files when in ASCII mode.
# Beware that turning on ascii_download_enable enables malicious remote parties
# to consume your I/O resources, by issuing the command "SIZE /big/file" in
# ASCII mode.
# These ASCII options are split into upload and download because you may wish
# to enable ASCII uploads (to prevent uploaded scripts etc. from breaking),
# without the DoS risk of SIZE and ASCII downloads. ASCII mangling should be
# on the client anyway..
#ascii_upload_enable=YES
#ascii_download_enable=YES
#
# You may fully customise the login banner string:
#ftpd_banner=Welcome to blah FTP service.
#
# You may specify a file of disallowed anonymous e-mail addresses. Apparently
# useful for combatting certain DoS attacks.
#deny_email_enable=YES
# (default follows)
#banned_email_file=/etc/vsftpd.banned_emails
#
# You may specify an explicit list of local users to chroot() to their home
# directory. If chroot_local_user is YES, then this list becomes a list of
# users to NOT chroot().
#chroot_list_enable=YES
# (default follows)
#chroot_list_file=/etc/vsftpd.chroot_list
#
# You may activate the "-R" option to the builtin ls. This is disabled by
# default to avoid remote users being able to cause excessive I/O on large
# sites. However, some broken FTP clients such as "ncftp" and "mirror" assume
# the presence of the "-R" option, so there is a strong case for enabling it.
#ls_recurse_enable=YES
#ftp_username=anon

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