Setting up FTP on Amazon Cloud Server

Question

I am trying to set up FTP on Amazon Cloud Server, but without luck. I search over net and there is no concrete steps how to do it.

I found those commands to run:

$ yum install vsftpd
$ ec2-authorize default -p 20-21
$ ec2-authorize default -p 1024-1048
$ vi /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf
#<em>---Add following lines at the end of file---</em>
    pasv_enable=YES
    pasv_min_port=1024
    pasv_max_port=1048
    pasv_address=<Public IP of your instance>
$ /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

But I don't know where to write them.

Answer 1

It will not be ok until you add your user to the group www by the following commands:

sudo usermod -a -G www <USER>

This solves the permission problem.

Set the default path by adding this:

local_root=/var/www/html

Answer 2

I followed clone45's answer all the way to the end. A great article! Since I needed the FTP access to install plug-ins to one of my wordpress sites, I changed the home directory to /var/www/mysitename. Then I continued to add my ftp user to the apache(or www) group like this:

sudo usermod -a -G apache myftpuser

After this I still saw this error on WP's plugin installation page: "Unable to locate WordPress Content directory (wp-content)". Searched and found this solution on a wp.org Q&A session: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unable-to-locate-wordpress-content-directory-wp-content and added the following to the end of wp-config.php:

if(is_admin()) {
    add_filter('filesystem_method', create_function('$a', 'return "direct";' ));
    define( 'FS_CHMOD_DIR', 0751 );
}

After this my WP plugin was installed successfully.

Answer 3

In case you are getting 530 password incorrect

1 more step needed

in file /etc/shells

Add the following line

/bin/false

Answer 4

Don't forget to update your iptables firewall if you have one to allow the 20-21 and 1024-1048 ranges in.

Do this from /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Adding lines like this:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 20:21 -j ACCEPT

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 1024:1048 -j ACCEPT

And restart iptables with the command:

sudo service iptables restart

Answer 5

To enable passive ftp on an EC2 server, you need to configure the ports that your ftp server should use for inbound connections, then open a list of available ports for the ftp client data connections.

I'm not that familiar with linux, but the commands you posted are the steps to install the ftp server, configure the ec2 firewall rules (through the AWS API), then configure the ftp server to use the ports you allowed on the ec2 firewall.

So this step installs the ftp client (VSFTP)

> yum install vsftpd

These steps configure the ftp client

> vi /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf
--    Add following lines at the end of file --
     pasv_enable=YES
     pasv_min_port=1024
     pasv_max_port=1048
     pasv_address=<Public IP of your instance> 
> /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

but the other two steps are easier done through the amazon console under EC2 Security groups. There you need to configure the security group that is assigned to your server to allow connections on ports 20,21, and 1024-1048

Answer 6

In case you have ufw enabled, remember add ftp:

> sudo ufw allow ftp

It took me 2 days to realise that I enabled ufw.