Hi Guys,

First off I am a total linux newbie. So I may be missing something very simple. Let me start with a little background.

I inherited (yes, that way) a forum that is run on Ubuntu with GUI that has low resources. The forum has not been updated in years and is no longer supported by IPB. So I need to update it. On top of that, the servers hard drive is full. Lastly, I have had a really hard time doing even basic stuff using the crappy GUI in ubuntu via RDP to its host (its a VPS and I have RDP access to its host server). (hint: the mouse takes almost a full second to start moving and its really hard to use).

So... I decided I would create a new VPS running CentOS7, since while I am a total linux newbie, I am a software developer and deal with command line stuff all the time, and so far its gone well. With one glaring exception.

Permissions.

After fighting with apache and IPB support for days, I finally got everything working properly, but the only way I could do it was to set the entire www folder to 777 recursively. I know darn well that this is bad bad bad... so while it worked, I checkpointed that server and started over to see if I could get a grasp of how this works, so that I know how to do it right.

I am at the point right now where LAMP has been freshly installed, and I am trying to get FTP access for my user account (frosty) on /var/www/html (actually another subfolder that I do not want to label here, but html works just the same).

I have followed 4 different "tutorials" that differed greatly (one had me create a new group called webadmin and use that, one used facl and the other just chown and chmod), and none worked. That leads me to believe that I am missing something insanely simple... like facepalm simple. At least I hope so. I went so far as to make my user the owner and group of the folder in question, along with a single file inside it, and I still cant see it in FTP (no errors, the file just does not show up in FTP, but it does say directory listing successful).

So... is there a stupid-simple way to allow user "frosty" ftp access to /var/www/html without jumping thru 14 rings of fire while your ankles are tied?

TIA

Frosty

Why do you want to use ftp?

Using SFTP over SSH is a much better and secure option for doing file transfers to a server.

My personal preference is to use this method, upload any files to my home folder and then SSH in to the server and move/permission them accordingly.

Well, simple answer to that...

I am a linux newbie lol.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how to use SFTP over SSH? Is that a option in filezilla? Remember I am a windows guy...

I did try to use SSH via putty once, but it did not work and since I had RDP access to terminal in, I just used that.

In short, I only need a simple way of getting the files to server. If I need to upload them to my home folder first and then move them from the terminal, I could do that I guess.. is that how most people do this? (I was under the impression that FTP was pretty standard for linux webhosts).