FTP Server

Create a user for FTP server connection

1. Create a new user, used only for FTP connections. You will be prompted for a password. Make sure it is a good one. The other details can be left blank or populated as you see fit (To delete a user type sudo deluser ftp-user-[username]).

sudo adduser ftp-user-[username]

Mount USB HDD/SSD into Raspberry Pi

1. Mount the USB HDD/SSD to the Raspberry Pi, and make sure that it is formatted as NTFS. Check the partition name of the USB HDD/SSD drive (e.g. /dev/sda2:

sudo blkid
sudo fdisk -l

2. Make a file in home to access quickly the USB HDD/SSD.

sudo mkdir /usb-ssd-storage

3. Now we know where our drive is, we need to mount it to a folder /usb-ssd-storage in home directory. Change [NO.] with the partition number name from the previous step (If you need to unmount the drive, run sudo umount /usb-ssd-storage).

sudo mount /dev/sda[NO.] /usb-ssd-storage

4. You’ll also have to set permissions to ensure the drive can be accessed properly:

sudo chmod 775 /usb-ssd-storage

5. Make the USB HDD/SSD mount permanently, by editing the ‘fstab’ file. We will mount an external drive at boot time only if it is plugged in, for that we will add auto and nofail to the entry (Otherwise when you boot up Raspberry Pi, a start job will run for /usb-ssd-storage for about 90 seconds, then it will return an error and the boot will be stuck until you take action using the terminal) Add the following line to the bottom of the file:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

/dev/sda[NO.] /usb-ssd-storage ntfs defaults,auto,nofail 0 0

6. Apply changes, by rebooting the operating system.

sudo shutdown -r now

7. Create a folder in the USB HDD/SSD storage, that will be accessed only by the ftp-user-[username].

sudo mkdir -p /usb-ssd-storage/ftp-user-[username]/files

8. Create a folder in the ‘ftp-user-[username]’ home directory, this will be used in the next step to bind to the folder we created in /root/usb-ssd-storage.

sudo mkdir /home/ftp-user-[username]/ssd-storage

9. Perform a bind to where the USB HDD/SSD is mounted. Edit the ‘fstab’ file so this bind is permanent. Add the following line to the bottom of the file, it should be below the line which was added in the previous step.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

/usb-ssd-storage/ftp-user-[username]/files /home/ftp-user-[username]/ssd-storage none bind,auto,nofail 0 0

10. Now change the ownership of this folder to the ‘ftp-user-[username]’ user:

sudo chown ftp-user-[username]:ftp-user-[username] /home/ftp-user-[username]/ssd-storage

Setting up an FTP Server on the Raspberry Pi

1. Install vsftpd (Very Secure FTP Daemon) to your Raspberry Pi by using the command below.

sudo apt install vsftpd

2. Before we can connect to our new Raspberry Pi FTP server we need to modify some settings. Let us begin modifying the vsftpd configuration file by using the nano text editor with the following command.

sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf

Within this file you will need uncomment (Remove the #) the following lines:

anonymous_enable=NO
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
local_umask=022
chroot_local_user=YES
chroot_list_enable=NO

Also you will need add the following lines (“local_root” option means that the user will be locked to their home directory).

user_sub_token=$USER
local_root=/home/$USER

3. For our new settings to take effect we need to restart the vsftpd daemon on the Raspberry Pi.

sudo service vsftpd restart

4. Modify the user’s home directory to read only.

sudo chmod a-w /home/ftp-user-[username]

5. You can now reboot the operating system and test the connection in a FTP program.

sudo shutdown -r now

6. Check the open ports on Raspberry Pi by typing the following command:

netstat -vatn

Connect to the FTP server using FileZilla

Connect using the following credentials:

Host: Adress of the raspberry pi network domain (e.g. 192.168.0.101).
Username: This is the username of the created user (e.g. ftp-user-[username]).
Password: The password used for creating the user.
Port: Using a FTP connection requires port no. 21.

Connect to the FTP using Windows 10 network location