In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FTP Server on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, FTP is a standard network protocol used for transferring files between computers over a network. It allows users to upload, download, and manage files on a remote server securely. Whether you’re running a website, managing a development team, or simply need a centralized file storage solution, an FTP server can be an invaluable tool.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation FTP Server on a Debian 10 (Buster).
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 10.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install FTP Server on Debian 10 Buster
Step 1. It’s always a good practice to keep your system packages up-to-date. Open a terminal and run the following commands:
sudo apt update
Step 2. Installing the FTP server on Debian systems.
The vsftpd package is available in the Debian repositories. Let’s start by updating our package list and installing the vsftpd daemon:
sudo apt install vsftpd
Once the installation is completed, you can check the version of vsftpd package by running the following command in Terminal:
sudo systemctl status vsftpd
Step 3. Configure the FTP server.
Now we will perform some configurations required for setting up the FTP server in our Debian OS:
sudo cp /etc/vsftpd.conf /etc/vsftpd.conf.bak sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf
Add/modify the following options with these values:
listen=NO listen_ipv6=YES anonymous_enable=NO local_enable=YES write_enable=YES local_umask=022 dirmessage_enable=YES use_localtime=YES xferlog_enable=YES connect_from_port_20=YES chroot_local_user=YES secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd/empty pam_service_name=vsftpd rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem rsa_private_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key ssl_enable=NO pasv_enable=Yes pasv_min_port=10000 pasv_max_port=10100 allow_writeable_chroot=YES
With the configuration file saved, restart vsftpd apply the new changes:
sudo systemctl restart vsftpd
Step 4. Configure Firewall.
To open port 21 (FTP command port), port 20 (FTP data port) and 30000-31000 (Passive ports range), run the following commands:
sudo ufw allow 20:21/tcp sudo ufw allow 30000:31000/tcp
Reload the UFW rules by disabling and re-enabling UFW:
sudo ufw disable sudo ufw enable
Step 5. Create FTP User.
We will now create a new user that we will use to log into FTP. In this example, we will create a new user called chedelics:
$ sudo useradd -m chedelics $ sudo passwd radiks New password: Retype new password: passwd: password updated successfully
In order to verify that everything’s working properly, you should store at least one file in chedelics’s home directory. This file should be visible when we log in to FTP in the next steps:
sudo bash -c "echo FTP TESTING > /home/ftpuser/FTP-TEST"
Step 6. Test the FTP server on Debian 10.
To test the FTP connection, you will need to install an FTP client in the same or a separate system from where you want to access the FTP server. In our case, we are using FileZilla as an FTP client.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed FTP Server. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing FTP Server on your Debian 10 Buster system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official vsftpd website.
