How to Create a FTP User and Restrict Them to a Specific Directory in Ubuntu 16.04

If you ever wondered how to create an FTP user and then restrict them to a certain directory in Ubuntu 16.04, this guide is for you. This guide works especially well with the following: Ubuntu 16.04, Amazon Web Services (AWS) – EC2.

You want to open up Terminal and type the following commands and follow the instructions in order.

You first want to make sure your ports are open in your security group for your server in AWS – EC2.

If not, you will need to add two Custom TCP rules:

Custom TCP Rule: 20-21

Custom TCP Rule: 1024-1048

Then save the rules.

We will then create FTP users.

We first want to create an FTP user:

sudo adduser yourftpuser

If you want, you can change the home directory of the user:

sudo usermod -d /your/path/for/the/user yourftpuser

You can also change the home directory by editing a file:

nano /etc/passwd

Then find and change it to whatever you like (something like this):

yourftpuser:x:1001:1001:,,,:/your/path/for/the/user

You first want to login as root:

sudo -i

You then want to update the repositories.

apt-get update

After that, you want to install vsftpd:

apt-get install vsftpd

Create a backup of your vsftpd file:

cp /etc/vsftpd.conf /etc/vsftpd.conf.backup

You can then edit the vsftpd.conf file with nano or vi:

nano /etc/vsftpd.conf

or

vi /etc/vsftpd.conf

Then you want to edit or uncomment the following lines so that the final result looks like this:

anonymous_enable=NO
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
chroot_local_user=YES
pam_service_name=ftp

and you want to add the following lines:

allow_writeable_chroot=YES
pasv_enable=YES
pasv_min_port=1024
pasv_max_port=1048

You then want to restart vsftpd for the changes to take effect:

systemctl restart vsftpd

or

/etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

You can now try to log into your server using FTP (port 21) via your favorite FTP client, such as FileZilla.

Good luck, and happy coding and working with servers!