HOWTO: Setup Pure-FTP on Ubuntu 9.10 with passive NAT support.

Please read my earlier posts on what I'm trying to accomplish. They will guide you to setup an Ubuntu 9.10 Server and give you an idea of my conventions. This is assuming you are using Ubuntu Server 9.10. Other flavors of linux may behave differently. The majority of my guidance on this came from ubuntu howto. My real work came from putting the other pieces together to meet my particular needs. Namely, the other 5 posts in the series.

Login and use sudo su again

apt-get install pure-ftpd

Now you should be able to connect to your FTP on port 21 at the server IP using your username and password. we are not ready to connect from the outside yet.

Setup all the pure-ftp settings. These setting files for pure-ftp work differently than what the pure documentation indicates. This may just be an Ubuntu thing. In the end, these files are 'translated' into command line switches.
Each line simply writes a value into the file. You can do the same by opening the file with nano and typing the value on the first line. Some setting files already exist and they should remain as they also contain important settings.

cd /etc/pure-ftpd/conf

Security Related Settings:

echo 99 > MaxDiskUsage
You can lower this but keep some setting here or someone could crash your server by filling the disk.

echo no > PAMAuthentication

echo 20 > MaxClientsNumber
You can change this but don't get too high. Be realistic with your bandwidth and server power.

echo 4 > MaxClientsPerIP

echo yes > ChrootEveryone

echo yes > NoChmod

echo yes > ProhibitDotFilesRead

echo yes > ProhibitDotFilesWrite

Network Settings:

echo 183.22.182.3 > ForcePassiveIP
Your external IP. Assuming you are behind a NAT Router.

echo ,3421 > Bind
A port for your FTP server. 21 is the standard but I change mine to keep them guessing. The comma is intentional.

echo 60000 60100 > PassivePortRange
For NAT forwarding issues you need to set this. Make sure your range supports 2x MaxClientsNumber. This and the Bind setting will be used on your router. write them down.

Misc Setting:

echo yes > BrokenClientsCompatibility


Finally restart your FTP server:
/etc/init.d/pure-ftpd restart

Here is my output from the command above.

Restarting ftp server: Running: /usr/sbin/pure-ftpd -l puredb:/etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.pdb -x -O clf:/var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log -u 1000 -S ,3421 -c 20 -k 99 -C 4 -P 183.22.182.3 -X -b -8 UTF-8 -Y 1 -A -E -R -p 60000:60100 -B

You can now go into your router and forward the main port (3421) and the passive port range (60000-60100) to your server IP (192.168.1.99).

Test your system from outside of your network if possible.

In the next post I will show you how to setup some virtual users with shared folder access.