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Network Security Hacks
book

Network Security Hacks

by Andrew Lockhart
April 2004
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
320 pages
9h 10m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Network Security Hacks

Use proftp with a MySQL Authentication Source

Make sure that your database system’s OS is running as efficiently as possible with these tweaks.

proftpd is a powerful FTP daemon with a configuration syntax much like Apache. It has a whole slew of options not available in most FTP daemons, including ratios, virtual hosting, and a modularized design that allows people to write their own modules.

One such module is mod_sql , which allows proftpd to use a SQL database as its back-end authentication source. Currently, mod_sql supports MySQL and PostgreSQL. This can be a good way to help lock down access to your server, as inbound users will authenticate against the database (and therefore not require an actual shell account on the server). In this hack, we’ll get proftpd authenticating against a MySQL database.

First, download and build the source to proftpd and mod_sql:

~$ bzcat proftpd-1.2.6.tar.bz2 | tar xf -
~/proftpd-1.2.6/contrib$ tar zvxf ../../mod_sql-4.08.tar.gz 
~/proftpd-1.2.6/contrib$ cd ..
~/proftpd-1.2.6$ ./configure --with-modules=mod_sql:mod_sql_mysql \
--with-includes=/usr/local/mysql/include/ \
--with-libraries=/usr/local/mysql/lib/

(Naturally, substitute the path to your mySQL install, if it isn’t in /usr/local/mysql/.) Now, build the code and install it:

rob@catlin:~/proftpd-1.2.6$ make && sudo make install

Next, create a database for proftpd to use (assuming that you already have mysql up and running):

$ mysqladmin create proftpd

Then, permit read-only access to it from ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596006438Catalog PageErrata