pure-ftpd: Adventures in the service sector

My experiences with managing ftp servers is exceedingly thin.

All the same, I do enjoy boasting about a bare-bones server I set up about eight years ago, using a busted-up 300Mhz laptop without a hard drive, a Xubuntu 6.10 live CD, a USB key and vsftpd. And with that sparse recipe, managed to transfer some files from my brother, who lived in another part of the world.

(And yes, that’s how far *Ubuntu has fallen, given that it could run live on a machine with only 256Mb of memory and still have a sliver of space left over for file transfers. I’m afraid to see how heavy it has become. 😯 )

Point being, I’m usually on the other end of the ftp adventure. I’m more experienced with clients than servers. lftp, ncftp, cmdftp, even plain ol’ ftp if need be.

Servers just never enter my sphere. All the same, here’s pure-ftpd, in the best way I can show that it works.

2014-03-18-l3-b7175-pure-ftpd 2014-03-18-lv-r1fz6-pure-ftpd

That’s the Debian version of the server running off a Linux Mint live CD, with my Arch machine accessing it through the network. I didn’t actually go through the entire setup, because it’s gone as soon as I turn off the Mint system, and I haven’t really anything to transfer … except maybe that screenshot. 🙄

I can’t tell you what’s the best server system, and I’m not experienced enough to know what to look for anyway, so if you have a particular one you like, I suggest you stick with it.

On the other hand, if you have a leftover 300Mhz laptop with no hard drive and a dusty Xubuntu 6.10 live CD, and maybe a USB drive to stash files on … well, why not give pure-ftpd a go?

Worse comes to worst, I can tell you firsthand that vsftpd will work, even if pure-ftpd doesn’t. 😀

5 thoughts on “pure-ftpd: Adventures in the service sector”

  1. thisnameisfalse

    One important feature of FTP servers is implementation of virtual users.

    Does my FTP server use “system users” (users with login folders below /home) or “virtual users” (usernames in a separate database).

  2. jojo

    good point thisname. also, don’t use FTP at all because its insecure. use sftp (FTP over SSH). you can do this with the regular sshd and its really simple. *however*, I think each user will require an account on the server, …which isn’t that big of a deal if they are few, just ensure shell is /bin/false or whatever and that their root is set.

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