Setting up FTP on VPS

Setting up FTP on VPS

Setting up and FTP service on your server can be very useful if you wish to use the server to remotely store files. This tutorial will show you step by step how to set up FTP on your VPS so you can connect to it using any FTP client.

Installing

To have FTP access to your server you must first install the FTP software. Log in to your VPS and type in 

su

This is the command to switch user into the root user and you will be prompted for a password. Once you have entered the password check you are root by looking at the command line, it should look like:

[root@hostname username]#

Now install the FTP server with the command:

yum install vsftpd

Enter y when prompted and you should see Complete! once the service has successfully been installed. If you wish to configure the FTP service you can edit the file /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf however the default settings will allow you to connect using the user account you have created.

Now that the server is installed you must run the service, to do this enter the command:

service vsftpd start

If successful you will see:

Starting vsftpd for vsftpd:              [  OK  ]

The FTP service is now running and you are able to connect to it. 

su username

Will take you out of root and into your user account again.

Connecting to FTP server

To connect to your FTP server you must install FTP client software on the computer you trying to access the server from. You can use any FTP client you wish however I will be using FireFTP, a Firefox addon as my client. You can download the addon from fireftp.net. After installed, restart Firefox and open FireFTP by selecting the Firefox button at the top left, Web Developer, FireFTP. A new tab should open similar to this:

Select create an account in the top left and a box should pop up. Enter the IP address of the server next to host and use the user account and password you created for the Login and Password boxes. Once completed it should look similar to:

Click OK and in the top left you should now have the option to connect to the account you just created. Press connect and as long as the details you entered were correct you should connect to the FTP server as shown below:

The left side is your computer and the right is the server. To transfer a file to the server select the file in the left side and choose a destination on the right side. Select the arrow pointing to the right while your file you wish to transfer is selected and the file will be transferred to the server.

Congratulations, you have successfully set up FTP!

Note: By default you will not be able to access the server as root. This can however be changed by editing the file /etc/vsftpd/user_list and removing root from the list. After doing this and restarting the service (service  vsftpd restart) you should be able to log in as root.

If you have any questions on comments feel free to ask them!

Thanks