Guide On How To Install ProFTPD On FreeBSD

A Step By Step Guide On How To Install ProFTPD On FreeBSD
Getting ProFTPD to run on FreeBSD is quite simple and can be done in a few steps. Now before you start you will need to consider this. ProFTPD does not use “Virtual Users” like it’s sister PureFTPD. That means you need to have a “Real User Account” in your master password file on your system for each ftp account. Unlike PureFTPD which is able to use it’s own user database. Also worth mentioning is the fact the ProFTPD has not been translated to all languages which may cause some strange behavior truncating files with international characters.

Installing ProFTPD

cd /usr/ports/ftp/proftpd && make install clean BATCH=yes

Once done we need to adjust the configuration slightly to our needs. The configuration file for Proftp is located here /usr/local/etc/proftpd.conf

Change the Server Name. Please note this will have no effect if you are using “ServerIdent Off” So find this line.

ServerName                      "ProFTPD Default Installation"

And change it to something fancy like the example below.

ServerName                      "FTP Server"

Next we want to chroot users to their home directory. Find this line.

#DefaultRoot ~

And remove the # so it looks like this.

DefaultRoot ~

If you are not going to use IPV6 turn IPV6 support off by finding this line.

UseIPv6                         on

And change it to.

UseIPv6                         off

Optional Hide Identity Start
Ind order to hide your FTP servers identity find this line.

ServerName                      "ProFTPD Default Installation"

And “above” that line insert the following.

# Hide server identity
ServerIdent off

So it looks something like this when done.

# Hide server identity
ServerIdent off
ServerName                      "ProFTPD Default Installation"

Optional Hide Identity Stop

Optional Set Passive Ports Range Start

If your firewall requires a passive port range you need to find this line.

Port                            21

And below that insert the following “replace 00000 and 99999” with the passive port numbers.

PassivePorts 00000 99999

So it would end up looking something like this.

Port                            21
PassivePorts 30000 30200

Optional Set Passive Ports Range Stop

Test Flight
Once you are ready you can to a “test flight” by sarting proftp up once and see if it works like this.

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/proftpd onestart

If you are satisfied you can then add proftpd to /etc/rc.conf in order for it to start at boot time like this.

proftpd_enable="YES"

A Simple Stripped Down ProFTPD Config File

ServerIdent             off
ServerName              "Ftp Server"
ServerType              standalone
DefaultServer           on

ScoreboardFile          /var/run/proftpd/proftpd.scoreboard

Port                    21
# PassivePorts          00000 99999

UseIPv6                 off

Umask                   022

MaxInstances            30

CommandBufferSize       512

User                    nobody
Group                   nogroup

DefaultRoot ~

AllowOverwrite          on

# Bar use of SITE CHMOD by default

DenyAll

And we are done here.