I have installed vsftpd, and am having all kinds of problems with it coming in from my FreeBSD system (and I've seen countless sites with similar, but not quite the same) issues.

I've seen a few issues (so far). First, I wanted to get the source for ncftp over to FreeBSD (later discovered a package, but that's not the point). vsftpd constantly left out anything with "ncftp" anywhere in the name. I then renamed the .tar.gz file gftp and it STILL refused to see (and show) it. I put the source and libncftpd (which I downloaded in case I'll need it) into a directory under Downloads called ncftp. Nope. Still won't show it. So I thought maybe there's a depth issue, and moved it to my home directory. No change.

So I was still thinking it was the FreeBSD ftp acting up. Once I installed the ncftp package on my FreeBSD system, I tried it, expecting (incorrectly) for it to work. Obviously, no dice.

So then, just for another test, I did a cd into my ~/src directory, which has 25 items in it (per ls -C1 | wc -l). vsftp showed about eight or so of those 25 items.

I'd also tried this proftpd thing with an unnecessarily large config file. No thanks. So how do I install just the plain old ftpd instead? Or should I get the one from TCP Wrappers and install it?

Thanks

Short answer: Don’t use ftp at all. Use sftp, which is included with ssh.

I’ll suggest that it’s not a problem with vsftp(d). My best guess would be that the files are not visible to the user running/logging in due to permissions and/or ownership. ls -l will display both.

Indeed. Use SFTP and not FTP. You'll find that SFTP is already up and running if you have the package OpenSSH-server.

Can you go into more detail about your work flow? Except for a few very uncommon edge cases, SFTP will fit right in.

Edit: WOW! vsftpd just went another step deeper into insanity. It's showing an old TCP Wrappers directory that no longer exists (it's in Downloads now), and of course, it's not showing the new one (again, in Downloads). I would have to say that vsftpd is NRFPR (not ready for public release).

First, I'll be going with TCP Wrappers for everything. I've used them in the past and they're very secure. Block everyone in hosts.deny and allow only local sites and outside sites you trust (that was back then on USAF systems.... not now) in hosts.allow. Wietse Venema did a great job on them (but when you consider what prompted him to write them ....).

As for my work flow, what would you like to know?

Thanks

Thanks.

TCP Wrappers / tcpd was deprecated in OpenSSH long ago. In Linux they've been replaced with a mixture of ipchains iptables nftables plus the OpenSSH configuration directives Match, AllowGroups, and DenyGroups. Check all three in "man sshd_config".

If your work flow does not require anonymous uploads or virtual users then it'd be hard to rationalize using FTP in place of SFTP.

Sounds like you might have a permission problem. Without seeing the config, it's hard to know. I never setup vsftp, but I have proftpd. Keep in mind vsftp is made to be strict about security.

People still use ftp because anything that speaks IP typically has an ftp client out of the box. I need to connect FreeDOS, WindowsME, Windows NT4, and OpenVMS from the mid 90s to the 2000s. Good luck getting OpenSSH on those. Also, OpenSSH likes to break itself every 3-5 years when all the cryptography changes. It's great for security between modern systems when you a) know your users b) already gave them keys or c) they have passwords on the system. Using ftp for shuffling basic files or source code around is perfectly fine as well as using it in an internal LAN.

You can wrap OpenSSH under (x)inetd's use of libwrap. sshd will run as a xinetd service (give it the "-i" flag). GNU inetutils has an ftpd as well. I'd pick one and stick with it. If you want config snippets from proftpd if you decide on that, I have those.

Right now I'm still getting FreeBSD set up, copying some of my stuff over, etc. Ultimately NFS is the plan for certain directories. But it's nice to be able to ftp between android devices and the FreeBSD desktop and slackware laptop instead of always having to use pcloud as a go-between.

Again, I'd recommend using SFTP.

There are good SFTP clients for Android, and both clients and servers (OpenSSH) for FreeBSD and Slackware.

Edit: additionally you have options like Rsync and SSHFS if you go that route.

I was thinking rcp. :-)

You are going to get yelled at.

By who? These aren't government systems. My first cancer (2006--7) forcibly retired me. These are my systems. I answer to me.