Overview

Secrets in This Chapter

• Understanding FTP

• Using the Command-Line FTP Client

• Using a Graphical FTP Client

• Learning the vsftpd Configuration Files

• Understanding the /etc/vsftpd.ftpusers File

• Learning the Key Features of Anonymous FTP

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a popular client/server software for transferring files from one system to another. If you have an ISP account that provides you with a home page, you've probably used FTP to upload your Web pages to the ISP's server. Using an FTP client, you log in to your ISP account and copy the files from your home system to the ISP's server.

You can also use FTP to download other files, such as open source software from Internet hosts. In this case, you don't need an account on the remote system. You simply log in using the anonymous user name and provide your email address as the password. This is called anonymous FTP. If you want to enable others to download files from your system by using FTP, you can set up anonymous FTP on your system so that users can log in with the user name 'anonymous.'

Red Hat Linux comes with several FTP clients and the Very Secure FTP daemon (vsftpd), written by Chris Evans. Red Hat Linux also includes a package called anonftp that sets up the files you need to support anonymous FTP. This chapter introduces you to a few FTP clients and, for the command-line FTP client, describes the commands you use to work with remote directories. It also shows you how to configure the FTP server through text configuration files and how to control access to the FTP server. Finally, this chapter describes anonymous FTP-how it's set up and how to ensure that it's secure.