uftpd is a UNIX daemon with sane built-in defaults. It just works.
- FTP and/or TFTP
- No complex configuration file
- Runs from standard UNIX inetd, or standalone
- Uses
ftp
user's$HOME
, from/etc/passwd
, or custom path - Uses
ftp/tcp
andtftp/udp
from/etc/services
, or custom ports - Privilege separation, drops root privileges having bound to ports
- Possible to use symlinks outside of the FTP home directory
- Possible to have group writable FTP home directory
uftpd [-hnsv] [-l LEVEL] [-o OPTS] [PATH]
-h Show this help text
-l LEVEL Set log level: none, err, notice (default), info, debug
-n Run in foreground, do not detach from controlling terminal
-o OPT Options:
ftp=PORT
tftp=PORT
pasv_addr=ADDR
writable
-s Use syslog, even if running in foreground, default w/o -n
-v Show program version
The optional 'PATH' defaults to the $HOME of the /etc/passwd user 'ftp'
Bug report address: https://github.com/troglobit/uftpd/issues
To start uftpd in the background as an FTP/TFTP server:
uftpd
If the ftp
user does not exist on your system, uftpd
defaults to
serve files from the /srv/ftp
directory. To serve another directory,
simply append that directory to the argument list.
Use sudo
, or set CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
capabilities, on uftpd
to
allow regular users to start uftpd
on privileged (standard) ports,
i.e. < 1024
:
sudo setcap cap_net_bind_service+ep uftpd
To change port on either FTP or TFTP, use:
uftpd -o ftp=PORT,tftp=PORT
Set PORT
to zero (0) to disable either service.
New sessions are droppbed by default if uftpd detects the FTP root is writable. To allow writable FTP root:
uftpd -o writable PATH
Note: since v2.11 uftpd logs a lot more events by default. Set up your syslogd to redirect
LOG_FTP
to a separate log file, or reduce the log level of uftpd using-l error
to only log errors and higher.
Rarely used services like FTP/TFTP are good candidates to run from the
Internet super server, inetd. On Debian and Ubuntu based distributions
we recommend openbsd-inetd
.
Use the following two lines in /etc/inetd.conf
, notice how in.ftpd
and in.tftpd
are symlinks to the uftpd
binary:
ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/in.ftpd
tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
Remember to activate your changes to inetd by reloading the service or
sending SIGHUP
to it. Another inetd server may use different syntax.
Like the inetd that comes built-in to Finit, in /etc/finit.conf
:
inetd ftp/tcp nowait /usr/sbin/in.ftpd -- The uftpd FTP server
inetd tftp/udp wait /usr/sbin/in.tfptd -- The uftpd TFTP server
uftpd is primarily not targeted at secure installations, it is targeted at users in need of a simple FTP/TFTP server.
uftpd allows symlinks outside the FTP root, as well as a group writable FTP home directory — user-friendly features that potentially can cause security breaches, but also very useful for people who just want their FTP server to work. A lot of care has been taken, however, to lock down and secure uftpd by default.
curl -sS https://deb.troglobit.com/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://deb.troglobit.com/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/troglobit.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install uftpd
uftpd
depends on two other projects to build from source, libuEv
and lite. See their respective README for details, there should be
no real surprises, both use the familiar configure, make, make install.
To find the two libraries uftpd depends on pkg-config
. The package
name for your Linux distribution varies, on Debian/Ubuntu systems:
user@example:~/> sudo apt install pkg-config
uftpd, as well as its dependencies, can be built as .deb
packages on
Debian or Ubuntu based distributions. Download and install each of the
dependencies, and then run
./autogen.sh <--- Only needed if using GIT sources
./configure
make package
The .deb
package takes care of setting up /etc/inetd.conf
, create an
ftp
user and an /srv/ftp
home directory with write permissions for
all members of the users
group.
If you are using a different Linux or UNIX distribution, check the
output from ./configure --help
, followed by make all install
.
For instance, building on Alpine Linux:
PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig ./configure \
--prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var --sysconfdir=/etc
Provided the library dependencies were installed in /usr/local/
. This
PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR
trick may be needed on other GNU/Linux, or UNIX,
distributions as well.
uftpd was originally based on FtpServer by Xu Wang, but is now a complete rewrite with TFTP support by Joachim Wiberg, maintained at GitHub.