Setup FTP Server On CentOS, RHEL Linux 6.5/6.4/6.3

Install vsftpd

All commands should be run with ‘root’ user. Run the following command in terminal to install vsftpd package:

# yum install vsftpd ftp -y

Configure vsftpd

Edit vsftpd configuration file /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf, 

Find the following lines and make the changes as shown below:

## Set to "NO" ##
anonymous_enable=NO

## Uncomment ##
ascii_upload_enable=YES
ascii_download_enable=YES

## Uncomment - Enter your Welcome message - This is optional ##
ftpd_banner=Welcome to UNIXMEN FTP service.

## Add at the end of this  file ##
use_localtime=YES

Start the vsftpd service and make it to start automatically on every reboot:

# service vsftpd start
# chkconfig vsftpd on

By default, root user is not allowed to login to ftp server for security purpose. So let us create a testing user called “karsel” with password “password”:

# useradd karsel
# passwd karsel

Connecting to FTP server

Now let us try to connect to FTP server itself with user “karsel”:

# ftp 192.168.1.1
Connected to 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1).
220 Welcome to UNIXMEN FTP service.
Name (192.168.1.1:root): karsel
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
500 OOPS: cannot change directory:/home/karsel
Login failed.
ftp> 

Probably you will get an error like “500 OOPS: cannot change directory”.

This is because your SELinux restricts the user to log in to ftp server. So let us update the SELinux boolean values for FTP service:

# setsebool -P ftp_home_dir on

Now try again to login to FTP server:

# ftp 192.168.1.1
Connected to 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1).
220 Welcome to UNIXMEN FTP service.
Name (192.168.1.1:root): karsel
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>