VSFTPD.CONF 5

NAME
vsftpd.conf, the config file for vsftpd

DESCRIPTION
vsftpd.conf may be used to control various aspects of vsftpd's behaviour. By default, vsftpd looks for this file at the location /etc/vsftpd.conf . However, you may override this by specifying a command line argument to vsftpd. The command line argument is the pathname of the configuration file for vsftpd. This behaviour is useful because you may wish to use an advanced inetd such as xinetd to launch vsftpd with different configuration files on a per virtual host basis.


FORMAT
The format of vsftpd.conf is very simple. Each line is either a comment or a directive. Comment lines start with a # and are ignored. A directive line has the format:
option=value
It is important to note that it is an error to put any space between the option, = and value.
Each setting has a compiled in default which may be modified in the configuration file.


BOOLEAN OPTIONS
Below is a list of boolean options. The value for a boolean option may be set to YES or NO .
anon_mkdir_write_enable
If set to YES, anonymous users will be permitted to create new directories under certain conditions. For this to work, the option write_enable must be activated, and the anonymous ftp user must have write permission on the parent directory.
Default: NO

anon_other_write_enable
If set to YES, anonymous users will be permitted to perform write operations other than upload and create directory, such as deletion and renaming. This is generally not recommended but included for completeness.
Default: NO

anon_upload_enable
If set to YES, anonymous users will be permitted to upload files under certain conditions. For this to work, the option write_enable must be activated, and the anonymous ftp user must have write permission on desired upload locations.
Default: NO

anon_world_readable_only
When enabled, anonymous users will only be allowed to download files which are world readable. This is recognising that the ftp user may own files, especially in the presence of uploads.
Default: YES

anonymous_enable
Controls whether anonymous logins are permitted or not. If enabled, both the usernames ftp and anonymous are recognised as anonymous logins.
Default: YES

ascii_download_enable
When enabled, ASCII mode data transfers will be honoured on downloads.
Default: NO

ascii_upload_enable
When enabled, ASCII mode data transfers will be honoured on uploads.
Default: NO

async_abor_enable
When enabled, a special FTP command known as "async ABOR" will be enabled. Only ill advised FTP clients will use this feature. Addtionally, this feature is awkward to handle, so it is disabled by default. Unfortunately, some FTP clients will hang when cancelling a transfer unless this feature is available, so you may wish to enable it.
Default: NO

background
When enabled, and vsftpd is started in "listen" mode, vsftpd will background the listener process. i.e. control will immediately be returned to the shell which launched vsftpd.
Default: NO

check_shell
Note! This option only has an effect for non-PAM builds of vsftpd. If disabled, vsftpd will not check /etc/shells for a valid user shell for local logins.
Default: YES

chmod_enable
When enables, allows use of the SITE CHMOD command. NOTE! This only applies to local users. Anonymous users never get to use SITE CHMOD.
Default: YES

chown_uploads
If enabled, all anonymously uploaded files will have the ownership changed to the user specified in the setting chown_username . This is useful from an administrative, and perhaps security, standpoint.
Default: NO

chroot_list_enable
If activated, you may provide a list of local users who are placed in a chroot() jail in their home directory upon login. The meaning is slightly different if chroot_local_user is set to YES. In this case, the list becomes a list of users which are NOT to be placed in a chroot() jail. By default, the file containing this list is /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list, but you may override this with the chroot_list_file setting.
Default: NO

chroot_local_user
If set to YES, local users will be placed in a chroot() jail in their home directory after login. Warning: This option has security implications, especially if the users have upload permission, or shell access. Only enable if you know what you are doing. Note that these security implications are not vsftpd specific. They apply to all FTP daemons which offer to put local users in chroot() jails.
Default: NO

connect_from_port_20
This controls whether PORT style data connections use port 20 (ftp-data) on the server machine. For security reasons, some clients may insist that this is the case. Conversely, disabling this option enables vsftpd to run with slightly less privilege.
Default: NO (but the sample config file enables it)

deny_email_enable
If activated, you may provide a list of anonymous password e-mail responses which cause login to be denied. By default, the file containing this list is /etc/vsftpd.banned_emails, but you may override this with the banned_email_file setting.
Default: NO

dirlist_enable
If set to NO, all directory list commands will give permission denied.
Default: YES

dirmessage_enable
If enabled, users of the FTP server can be shown messages when they first enter a new directory. By default, a directory is scanned for the file .message, but that may be overridden with the configuration setting message_file .
Default: NO (but the sample config file enables it)

download_enable
If set to NO, all download requests will give permission denied.
Default: YES

dual_log_enable
If enabled, two log files are generated in parallel, going by default to /var/log/xferlog and /var/log/vsftpd.log . The former is a wu-ftpd style transfer log, parseable by standard tools. The latter is vsftpd's own style log.
Default: NO

force_dot_files
If activated, files and directories starting with . will be shown in directory listings even if the "a" flag was not used by the client. This override exludes the "." and ".." entries.
Default: NO

guest_enable
If enabled, all non-anonymous logins are classed as "guest" logins. A guest login is remapped to the user specified in the guest_username setting.
Default: NO

hide_ids
If enabled, all user and group information in directory listings will be displayed as "ftp".
Default: NO

listen
If enabled, vsftpd will run in standalone mode. This means that vsftpd must not be run from an inetd of some kind. Instead, the vsftpd executable is run once directly. vsftpd itself will then take care of listening for and handling incoming connections.
Default: NO

listen_ipv6
Like the listen parameter, except vsftpd will listen on an IPv6 socket instead of an IPv4 one. This parameter and the listen parameter are mutually exlusive.
Default: NO

local_enable
Controls whether local logins are permitted or not. If enabled, normal user accounts in /etc/passwd may be used to log in.
Default: NO

log_ftp_protocol
When enabled, all FTP requests and responses are logged, providing the option xferlog_std_format is not enabled. Useful for debugging.
Default: NO

ls_recurse_enable
When enabled, this setting will allow the use of "ls -R". This is a minor security risk, because a ls -R at the top level of a large site may consume a lot of resources.
Default: NO

no_anon_password
When enabled, this prevents vsftpd from asking for an anonymous password - the anonymous user will log straight in.
Default: NO

one_process_model
If you have a Linux 2.4 kernel, it is possible to use a different security model which only uses one process per connection. It is a less pure security model, but gains you performance. You really don't want to enable this unless you know what you are doing, and your site supports huge numbers of simultaneously connected users.
Default: NO

passwd_chroot_enable
If enabled, along with chroot_local_user , then a chroot() jail location may be specified on a per-user basis. Each user's jail is derived from their home directory string in /etc/passwd. The occurence of /./ in the home directory string denotes that the jail is at that particular location in the path.
Default: NO

pasv_enable
Set to NO if you want to disallow the PASV method of obtaining a data connection.
Default: YES

pasv_promiscuous
Set to YES if you want to disable the PASV security check that ensures the data connection originates from the same IP address as the control connection. Only enable if you know what you are doing! The only legitimate use for this is in some form of secure tunnelling scheme.
Default: NO

port_enable
Set to NO if you want to disallow the PORT method of obtaining a data connection.
Default: YES

port_promiscuous
Set to YES if you want to disable the PORT security check that ensures that outgoing data connections can only connect to the client. Only enable if you know what you are doing!
Default: NO

session_support
This controls whether vsftpd attempts to maintain sessions for logins. If vsftpd is maintaining sessions, it will try and update utmp and wtmp. It will also open a pam_session if using PAM to authenticate, and only close this upon logout. You may wish to disable this if you do not need session logging, and you wish to give vsftpd more opportunity to run with less processes and / or less privilege. NOTE - utmp and wtmp support is only provided with PAM enabled builds.
Default: YES

setproctitle_enable
If enabled, vsftpd will try and show session status information in the system process listing. In other words, the reported name of the process will change to reflect what a vsftpd session is doing (idle, downloading etc). You probably want to leave this off for security purposes.
Default: NO

syslog_enable
If enabled, then any log output which would have gone to /var/log/vsftpd.log goes to the system log instead. Logging is done under the FTPD facility.
Default: NO

tcp_wrappers
If enabled, and vsftpd was compiled with tcp_wrappers support, incoming connections will be fed through tcp_wrappers access control. Furthermore, there is a mechanism for per-IP based configuration. If tcp_wrappers sets the VSFTPD_LOAD_CONF environment variable, then the vsftpd session will try and load the vsftpd configuration file specified in this variable.
Default: NO

text_userdb_names
By default, numeric IDs are shown in the user and group fields of directory listings. You can get textual names by enabling this parameter. It is off by default for performance reasons.
Default: NO

use_localtime
If enabled, vsftpd will display directory listings with the the time in your local time zone. The default is to display GMT. The times returned by the MDTM FTP command are also affected by this option.
Default: NO

use_sendfile
An internal setting used for testing the relative benefit of using the sendfile() system call on your platform.
Default: YES

userlist_deny
This option is examined if userlist_enable is activated. If you set this setting to NO, then users will be denied login unless they are explicitly listed in the file specified by userlist_file . When login is denied, the denial is issued before the user is asked for a password.
Default: YES

userlist_enable
If enabled, vsftpd will load a list of usernames, from the filename given by userlist_file . If a user tries to log in using a name in this file, they will be denied before they are asked for a password. This may be useful in preventing cleartext passwords being transmitted. See also userlist_deny .
Default: NO

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).
Default: NO

write_enable
This controls whether any FTP commands which change the filesystem are allowed or not. These commands are: STOR, DELE, RNFR, RNTO, MKD, RMD, APPE and SITE.
Default: NO

xferlog_enable
If enabled, a log file will be maintained detailling uploads and downloads. By default, this file will be placed at /var/log/vsftpd.log, but this location may be overridden using the configuration setting vsftpd_log_file .
Default: NO (but the sample config file enables it)

xferlog_std_format
If enabled, the transfer log file will be written in standard xferlog format, as used by wu-ftpd. This is useful because you can reuse existing transfer statistics generators. The default format is more readable, however. The default location for this style of log file is /var/log/xferlog, but you may change it with the setting xferlog_file .
Default: NO


NUMERIC OPTIONS
Below is a list of numeric options. A numeric option must be set to a non negative integer. Octal numbers are supported, for convenience of the umask options. To specify an octal number, use 0 as the first digit of the number.
accept_timeout
The timeout, in seconds, for a remote client to establish connection with a PASV style data connection.
Default: 60

anon_max_rate
The maximum data transfer rate permitted, in bytes per second, for anonymous clients.
Default: 0 (unlimited)

anon_umask
The value that the umask for file creation is set to for anonymous users. NOTE! If you want to specify octal values, remember the "0" prefix otherwise the value will be treated as a base 10 integer!
Default: 077

connect_timeout
The timeout, in seconds, for a remote client to respond to our PORT style data connection.
Default: 60

data_connection_timeout
The timeout, in seconds, which is roughly the maximum time we permit data transfers to stall for with no progress. If the timeout triggers, the remote client is kicked off.
Default: 300

file_open_mode
The permissions with which uploaded files are created. Umasks are applied on top of this value. You may wish to change to 0777 if you want uploaded files to be executable.
Default: 0666

ftp_data_port
The port from which PORT style connections originate (as long as the poorly named connect_from_port_20 is enabled).
Default: 20

idle_session_timeout
The timeout, in seconds, which is the maximum time a remote client may spend between FTP commands. If the timeout triggers, the remote client is kicked off.
Default: 300

listen_port
If vsftpd is in standalone mode, this is the port it will listen on for incoming FTP connections.
Default: 21

local_max_rate
The maximum data transfer rate permitted, in bytes per second, for local authenticated users.
Default: 0 (unlimited)

local_umask
The value that the umask for file creation is set to for local users. NOTE! If you want to specify octal values, remember the "0" prefix otherwise the value will be treated as a base 10 integer!
Default: 077

max_clients
If vsftpd is in standalone mode, this is the maximum number of clients which may be connected. Any additional clients connecting will get an error message.
Default: 0 (unlimited)

max_per_ip
If vsftpd is in standalone mode, this is the maximum number of clients which may be connected from the same source internet address. A client will get an error message if they go over this limit.
Default: 0 (unlimited)

pasv_max_port
The maximum port to allocate for PASV style data connections. Can be used to specify a narrow port range to assist firewalling.
Default: 0 (use any port)

pasv_min_port
The minimum port to allocate for PASV style data connections. Can be used to specify a narrow port range to assist firewalling.
Default: 0 (use any port)

trans_chunk_size
You probably don't want to change this, but try setting it to something like 8192 for a much smoother bandwidth limiter.
Default: 0 (let vsftpd pick a sensible setting)


STRING OPTIONS
Below is a list of string options.
anon_root
This option represents a directory which vsftpd will try to change into after an anonymous login. Failure is silently ignored.
Default: (none)

banned_email_file
This option is the name of a file containing a list of anonymous e-mail passwords which are not permitted. This file is consulted if the option deny_email_enable is enabled.
Default: /etc/vsftpd.banned_emails

banner_file
This option is the name of a file containing text to display when someone connects to the server. If set, it overrides the banner string provided by the ftpd_banner option.
Default: (none)

chown_username
This is the name of the user who is given ownership of anonymously uploaded files. This option is only relevant if another option, chown_uploads , is set.
Default: root

chroot_list_file
The option is the name of a file containing a list of local users which will be placed in a chroot() jail in their home directory. This option is only relevant if the option chroot_list_enable is enabled, and the option chroot_local_user is disabled.
Default: /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list

cmds_allowed
This options specifies a comma separated list of allowed FTP commands (post login. USER, PASS and QUIT are always allowed pre-login). Other commands are rejected. This is a powerful method of really locking down an FTP server. Example: cmds_allowed=PASV,RETR,QUIT
Default: (none)

guest_username
See the boolean setting guest_enable for a description of what constitutes a guest login. This setting is the real username which guest users are mapped to.
Default: ftp

ftp_username
This is the name of the user we use for handling anonymous FTP. The home directory of this user is the root of the anonymous FTP area.
Default: ftp

ftpd_banner
This string option allows you to override the greeting banner displayed by vsftpd when a connection first comes in.
Default: (none - default vsftpd banner is displayed)

listen_address
If vsftpd is in standalone mode, the default listen address (of all local interfaces) may be overridden by this setting. Provide a numeric IP address.
Default: (none)

listen_address6
Like listen_address, but specifies a default listen address for the IPv6 listener (which is used if listen_ipv6 is set). Format is standard IPv6 address format.
Default: (none)

local_root
This option represents a directory which vsftpd will try to change into after a local (i.e. non-anonymous) login. Failure is silently ignored.
Default: (none)

message_file
This option is the name of the file we look for when a new directory is entered. The contents are displayed to the remote user. This option is only relevant if the option dirmessage_enable is enabled.
Default: .message

nopriv_user
This is the name of the user that is used by vsftpd when it want to be totally unprivileged. Note that this should be a dedicated user, rather than nobody. The user nobody tends to be used for rather a lot of important things on most machines.
Default: nobody

pam_service_name
This string is the name of the PAM service vsftpd will use.
Default: ftp

pasv_address
Use this option to override the IP address that vsftpd will advertise in response to the PASV command. Provide a numeric IP address.
Default: (none - the address is taken from the incoming connected socket)

secure_chroot_dir
This option should be the name of a directory which is empty. Also, the directory should not be writable by the ftp user. This directory is used as a secure chroot() jail at times vsftpd does not require filesystem access.
Default: /usr/share/empty

user_config_dir
This powerful option allows the override of any config option specified in the manual page, on a per-user basis. Usage is simple, and is best illustrated with an example. If you set user_config_dir to be /etc/vsftpd_user_conf and then log on as the user "chris", then vsftpd will apply the settings in the file /etc/vsftpd_user_conf/chris for the duration of the session. The format of this file is as detailed in this manual page!
Default: (none)

userlist_file
This option is the name of the file loaded when the userlist_enable option is active.
Default: /etc/vsftpd.user_list vsftpd_log_file This option is the name of the file to which we write the vsftpd style log file. This log is only written if the option xferlog_enable is set, and xferlog_std_format is NOT set. Alternatively, it is written if you have set the option dual_log_enable . One further complication - if you have set syslog_enable , then this file is not written and output is sent to the system log instead.
Default: /var/log/vsftpd.log

xferlog_file
This option is the name of the file to which we write the wu-ftpd style transfer log. The transfer log is only written if the option xferlog_enable is set, along with xferlog_std_format . Alternatively, it is written if you have set the option dual_log_enable .
Default: /var/log/xferlog


AUTHOR
chris@scary.beasts.org