vsftpd & pam.conf - RHES4 - virtual users

[Jeff Hoevenaar]

I am trying to setup virtual users within vsftpd on RedHat ES4. I have found that I need "pam" to do this. However, I cannot find any details of how these two are suppose to work together. The man page of pam seems limited and there is no actual pam.conf file installed. I believe pam is installed and I have vsftpd working with local users.

rpm -qa pam
pam-0.77-65.1

Any information on how to configure virtual users using pam.conf would be helpful.

Thanks.

[Tvs]

what u mean by virtual hosts

[Tvs]

sorry virtual users

[Jeff Hoevenaar]

From the man page of vsftpd.conf:

virtual_use_local_privs

If enabled, virtual users will use the same privileges as local users. By default, virtual users will use the same privileges as anonymous users, which tends to be more restrictive (especially in terms of write access).

[Ivan Ferreira]

Do you want to configure a chrooted environment? Guest users?

[Jeff Hoevenaar]

I want to create individual users that I can put restrictions on - like download only. It looks like "virtual users" is what I need but finding details on this is difficult. I am very unfimiliar with pam - which is what i think i need. I found a config in /etc/pam/vsftpd.

Hoping to find details on how to configure pam for vsftpd.

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

The download only is controlled by:

anon_upload_enable
write_enable

If you enabled uploads, then you must setup the directory where the users can upload the files. If the users don't have write permissions for the directory, they won't be able to upload files, only download.

So, is recommended that you chroot the users to a directory with write permissions disabled, and for every user that you want to allow upload, create an upload directory with write enabled permissions for the directory.

[Jeff Hoevenaar]

anon_upload_enable
write_enable

Those control access for the user "anonymous". I want to control access on a per user basis. I believe I need to setup "virtual users" to do this.

i.e. user "jeff" can upload and download but user "fred" can only download. And they are each assigned seperate home directories.

[Ivan Ferreira]

Re-read my last post.

The filesystems permissions are the key.

[Jeff Hoevenaar]

Ok that works.

I thought there would be a way to use a configuration file or something - maybe it is not needed.

Thanks.

[Hannes Piirsalu]

Seems that, this case is closed, but maybe someone still needs to set up virtual users...
Some time ago I allsaw needed to this. There is included complete howto in /usr/share/doc/vsftpd/EXAMPLE/VIRTUAL_USERS/README.gz
(I have Debian machine, but it not important. I hope it's included with RedHat package too).
If you do everything like this readme says...all goes ok. Just in case this readme is attached with this post. Important is - which db version you use, I was able to get it work with db3_load (db4_load did not work at all).
Good luck!