Need to set up an FTP server on your network to simplify file transfer between users or hosts? Look no further than the robust, secure and very free proFTPD server, which has everything you need to get up and running in a jiffy. This article covers installing and configuring proFTPD for both regular and anonymous FTP, and also explains how to customize the operation of the server for different requirements.
The first order of business to install proFTPD on the Linux box you plan to use as a server. Drop by the official proFTPD Web site at http://www.proftpd.org/and get yourself the latest stable release of the software (this tutorial uses proFTPd 1.2.8).
Once you've downloaded the source code archive to your Linux server (mine is named "olympus.melonfire.com"), log in as "root"
$ su -
Password: ****
and extract the source to a temporary directory.
$ cd /tmp
$ tar -xzvf /home/me/proftpd-1.2.8.tar.gz
Next, configure the package using the provided "configure" script,
$ cd /tmp/proftpd-1.2.8
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ftpd
and compile and install it.
$ make
$ make install
Unless you specified a different path to the "configure" script, proFTPD will have been installed to the directory "/usr/local/ftpd".
You can verify this by doing a quick directory scan of that directory - here's what you should see.
$ ls -lR /usr/local/ftpd/{bin,etc,sbin}
/usr/local/ftpd/bin:
total 28
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8108 May 7 10:24 ftpcount
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4940 May 7 10:24 ftptop
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 11552 May 7 10:24 ftpwho
/usr/local/ftpd/etc:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1817 May 7 10:24 proftpd.conf
/usr/local/ftpd/sbin:
total 320
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5356 May 7 10:24 ftpshut
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 May 7 10:24 in.proftpd ->
proftpd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 313312 May 7 10:24 proftpd
Once you've got proFTPd installed, the next step is to configure
it. Let's look at that next.
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