Creation of a new FTP user in Ubuntu Server.

Log into SSH via Putty or Any other SSH client

Switch to the root user

$ sudo -s

install vsftpd

$ sudo apt-get install vsftpd

activate vsftpd configuration file

$ sudo cp /etc/vsftpd.conf /etc/vsftpd.conf.orig

Now here’s a thing, every tutorial online would tell you to configure your firewall (UFW) but at TenderCo We use AWS which means we do not have to use UFW firewall. Therefor just whitelist the ports in the network settings of the lightsail instance.

Port 20

Port 21

Now Prepare the user directoy

$ sudo adduser YOURUSER

it will ask you for a password so STRONGPASSWORD then press enter for everything else, i mean its not like its going to greet you like SIRI or Alexa.. so you don’t have to give it your name, address, etc.

Now Make a directory for your user to access.. most likley its going to be the website directory in our case it was /var/www/html/new_dropsprint

$ sudo mkdir /var/www/html/new_dropsprint

$ sudo chown YOURUSER:YOURUSER /var/www/html/new_dropsprint

The chown command will give the necessary permissions to YOURUSER

you can verify these permissions using:

$ sudo ls -la /var/www/new_dropsprint

YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU SEE IT.. SO DON’T ASK FOR THE OUTPUT.

You Will have to manually configure your vsftpd.conf file for a safe Ftp connection on an AWS lightsail instance so it wouldn’t ask you for an SSH key.

$ sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf

in the vsftpd.conf you need to add these.. well you can choose to find each of these and uncomment them but thats gonna take hours.. trust me I just wasted 2 hours on this. so just write them from scratch. and If its the future me that’s following this… then… listen.. YOU’RE STUPID.

So here’s what you need to copy and paste in your vsftpd.conf file.

write_enable=YES
chroot_local_user=YES
user_sub_token=$USER
local_root=/var/www/html/new_dropsprint
pasv_min_port=40000
pasv_max_port=50000
userlist_enable=YES
userlist_file=/etc/vsftpd.userlist
userlist_deny=NO

that’s all.

Now restart the vsftpd service.

$ sudo service vsftpd restart

now go on filezilla and try connecting to your new ftp account! GOOD JOB! HAVE A COOKIE.

Additional If you want the SSH access removed

$ sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

add the following line in the sshd_config

DenyUsers YOURUSER

ctrl+s to save and exit.

$ sudo service sshd restart