James Pakele

Today’s project was setting up an FTP Server. I had a request to setup an FTP server that transmitted data using encryption. I opted to setup a virtual machine using VirtualBox and installed Ubuntu Server 8.10. I then followed the instructions in this instructional to setup the FTP using TLS encryption. I connected to the FTP server using Filezilla. Apparently when setting this up behind a router there are a couple extra steps you must take.

I guess it is recommended to use Passive mode, however when you do this the server replies with the actual server IP address and not the IP address of the external server, which is what is should do. This had me hunting the internet for a while and finally I came up with the following:

Add the following lines to the /etc/vsftpd.conf file:

pasv_enable=YES
pasv_address=xx.xx.xx.xx <= this is the external ip address of your router
pasv_min_port=12000
pasv_max_port=12100

Restarted the FTP server with

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

Then I had to forward a range of ports (12000 – 12100) to the internal IP address of the FTP server. Ofcourse this was in addition to forwarding the standard FTP ports (20 & 21) as well.

After this I was able to connect to the server using Filezilla with the servertype set to FTPES – FTP Over Explicit TLS/SSL.

Aloha!!!!