[KLUG Members] Re: Wu-ftpd problems

[Bryan-TheBS-Smith]

Richard Vincent wrote:
> Now I want to use it as a web server. I set everything up okay but for some
> reason I cannot log into ftp ... it continuously tells me that login is
> incorrect.  I modified the /etc/ftpaccess to include my user as an allowed
> user-id ( allow-uid MyUser ) and I removed my user from the ftpusers file,
> with no success at all.
> I installed wu-ftpd-2.6.1-16.i386.rpm and I'm also using xinetd (wu-ftpd is
> enabled)
> Any ideas would be greatly appreciated?

First rule of thumb:  If you want to get hacked, run WU-FTPD.

Second rule of thumb:  The FTP protocol sucks.

Third rule of thumb:  Various protocols can easily replace FTP today.

Seriously now, if you're just sharing out files, HTTP (web server) works
great.  The only issue, as you found, is how to upload them to your
server.  That's easy, use SCP and/or SFTP -- which are part of the SSH
suite.  I usually just tarball files up, use SCP to copy the single file
over, then SSH in and untar/move/modify the files as needed.  I have
been meaning to check out the newer SFTP functionality of SSH -- let
alone the various SCP/SFTP GUI programs for Windows/UNIX that are now
available.

Now if you need other people to upload files, people that don't have
accounts on your server (that could SSH in, if you want anyone for that
matter), there are several anonymous/virtual-user HTTP 1.1-based servers
out there.  HTTP 1.1 defines a way to "upload" files -- and many of
these programs have a simple web page that has an upload "button" that
people click on and then choose their files.  It recommend running these
simple programs on their own port (above 1024), separate from Apache.  I
haven't evaluated the various program out there myself, but maybe others
here have?

FTP, it sucks, don't use it and, especially, don't use WU-FTPD.  If you
really, really, really need an FTP server, try ProFTPD.  I could never
get WU-FTPD configured for non-anonymous FTP myself, and all the hacks
I've seen of it over the years tells me I don't want to bother.

-- TheBS' $0.02

-- 
Bryan "TheBS" Smith     mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org    chat:thebs413
Engineer   AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.   http://www.linux-wlan.org
President     SmithConcepts, Inc.     http://www.SmithConcepts.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Linux strives to solve computing issues, not ones Windows created.