How to configure FTP Server on Ubuntu

What is FTP?

FTP stands for (File Transfer Protocol) and it is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from the server to a client over the computer network. FTP is an insecure protocol to transfer files. Instead of the security of FTP, we have SFTP and FTPS. These protocols are needed to use SSL/TLS that allows to encrype the dada during transfer for security.

Not only the server was developed but the client also develops to communicate with the server and it for the operating system to handle this application for easy to execute command-line. The easy way you can use it with your browser that supports FTP protocol. [more detail about ftp]

In this tutorial, I will show you how to install the FTP server on Ubuntu step by step.

First, You need to Linux distro for support to install the FTP server. In this case, I will use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS distro for instruction.

Installation:

Anonymous FTP Configuration

If you allow anonymous can download files from the server you need to enable anonymous in vsftpd.conf that in path /etc/vsftpd.conf. You need to change the value to YES for enable.

You can create a directory anonymous for download by command below:

sudo mkdir -p /path/to/keep_files
sudo usermod -d /path/to/keep_file ftp

ftp is default user and the default password is "you can type any things you want". 

Restart Service

User Authenticated FTP Configuration

Users can download it by default after authenticated but users can not upload files to the server. If you want to allow user can upload file to the server you need to enable change value it to write_enable=YES in path /etc/vsftpd.conf:

Restart Service

Warning
For secure please DO NOT enable anonymous FTP upload. It can be an extreme security risk.