Install VSFTPD on Ubuntu 16.04

In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation and configuration of VSFTPD on Ubuntu 16.04. VSFTPD is an initialism of Very Secure File Transfer Protocol Daemon. It is free and open source, fast, stable, lightweight and very secure FTP server for Unix and Linux operating systems, authorized under the GNU General Public License. VSFTPD is one of the most used FTP servers for Linux and it is used as a default FTP server in some of the biggest Linux distros such as CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, NimbleX, Slackware and RHEL. Installing VSFTP on Ubuntu is an easy task, carefully follow the steps below and you should have it installed in less than 10 minutes.

1. Login via SSH

In order to install VSFTPD on your Ubuntu 16.04 server, you have to Login via SSH as user root

ssh root@IP_address

2. Update All Installed Packages

First of all, make sure that all installed packages are up to date

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

3. Install VSFTPD on Ubuntu 16.04

All you have to do to install VSFTPD on your Ubuntu 16.04 VPS is to run the following command in your Linux terminal

apt-get -y install vsftpd

4. Configure VSFTPD

After it is successfully installed, we have to make some changes to its configuration. Open the /etc/vsftpd.conf file and find and change the following lines:

vim /etc/vsftpd.conf

# Controls whether anonymous logins are permitted or not.
anonymous_enable=NO

# Allow local users to login
local_enable=YES

# Set 'write_enable' to YES in order to allow changes to the filesystem
write_enable=YES

# 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 can set the root directory of the FTP users. if not specified, users' home directory equals FTP home directory
local_root=public_html

Save the configuration file and restart the FTP server for the changes to take effect

systemctl restart vsftpd

Set VSFTPD to start automatically on system boot

systemctl enable vsftpd

You can find a list of all options in the configuration file at http://vsftpd.beasts.org/vsftpd_conf.html

Root logins are disabled by default in VSFTPD for security reasons. In order to access your FTP server you will have to create a new system user

adduser FTPUSER

Where FTPUSER is the name of the user you want to create. You will be prompted to enter a new password for the new user and few optional information such as the full name of the user, phone number, etc.. Please note that it is very important to always use strong passwords for the accounts. It is best to use a combination of letters and numbers and minimum 10 characters long.

Now, once your FTP server and installed and configured, and a new FTP user is created, you can access the FTP server with your newly created user via terminal, web browser or by using an FTP client such as FileZilla.

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