How to setup vsFTP server on Linux?

FTP refers to File Transfer Protocol. By default, Red Hat supports vsftp. If you do minimal RHEL installation, you mightn’t have vsftp related RPM packages installed.

To setup an anonymous ftp server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, follow these steps:

1. Verify that the vsftpd package is installed.

#rpm -qa |grep vsftpd

If it is not installed, the install it as follows:

RHEL 3 and 4

# up2date -i vsftpd

RHEL 5
# yum install vsftpd

2. Verify the localhost line in /etc/hosts looks like the following:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

3. Next configure the vsftpd.conf file. NOTE: Back up the vsftpd.conf file

# cd /etc/vsftpd
# cp vsftpd.conf ./vsftpd.conf.ORIG

Using an editor, open the file vsftpd.conf. Uncomment the line
anonymous_enable=YES. Save and quit the vsftpd.conf file.

4. Start the vsftpd service

# service vsftpd start

5. To have the vsftpd service persistent across reboot:

# chkconfig vsftpd on

6. To test the configuration run the following commands:

# ftp localhost

Login with:
username: anonymous
password: root@local

This should show an ftp prompt. Type ‘bye’ to exit to the command prompt.
NOTE: ports 20 and 21 must be opened on the firewall.