Linux Server Security, Second Edition

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 11: Securing File Services

In practice, you’d never use a vsftpd.conf file exactly like Example 11-8: all parame-

ters in it are, in fact, set to their default values. Rather, this listing is meant as a quick

reference. Let’s discuss its parameters in turn:

listen

Tells vsftpd to run as a daemon rather than as a “per-connection” process

invoked as needed by inetd or xinetd. Default value is

NO.

listen_address

Specifies which local IP address vsftpd should listen for connections to. The

default is

"" (null), signifying “all local IP addresses,” but if you wish to run mul-

tiple “virtual FTP servers,” you’ll need to set this parameter in each virtual

server’s configuration file (see the next section, “Virtual servers”).

anonymous_enable

This parameter, whose default is YES, determines whether vsftpd will accept

anonymous logins. If set to

YES (or not set at all), vsftpd will accept connections

from the users anonymous and ftp (the two are equivalent) without requiring a

real password.

ftp_username

The name of the user account used for anonymous logins, i.e., FTP logins as

anonymous and ftp. This account must exist in /etc/passwd and should have a

valid home directory that is not owned by the user account.

anon_root

The directory vsftpd should chroot into for anonymous logins. This