CentOS 7: Install vsftpd

Install vsftpd

All commands should be run with ‘root’ user. Run the following command in terminal to install vsftpd package:

yum install vsftpd ftp -y

Configure vsftpd

Edit vsftpd configuration file /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf,

vi /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf

Find the following lines and make the changes as shown below:

 [...]
## Disable anonymous login ##
anonymous_enable=NO

## Uncomment ##
ascii_upload_enable=YES
ascii_download_enable=YES

## Uncomment - Enter your Welcome message - This is optional ##
ftpd_banner=Welcome to UNIXMEN FTP service.

## Add at the end of this  file ##
use_localtime=YES

Enable and start the vsftpd service:

systemctl enable vsftpd
systemctl start vsftpd

Firewall And SELinux Configuration

Allow the ftp service and port 21 via firewall.

firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=21/tcp
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=ftp

Restart firewall:

firewall-cmd --reload

Then, update the SELinux boolean values for FTP service:

setsebool -P ftp_home_dir on

Create FTP users

By default, root user is not allowed to login to ftp server for security purpose. So, let us create a normal testing user called “sk” with password “centos”.

useradd sk
passwd sk

Connecting to FTP server

Now, try to connect to FTP server itself with user “sk”:

ftp 192.168.1.101

Enter the ftp user name and password.

Sample Output:

Connected to 192.168.1.101 (192.168.1.101).
220 Welcome to UNIXMEN FTP service.
Name (192.168.1.101:root): sk
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>