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How to add NTFS volume with NTFS-3G and use it for VSFTPD anonymous upload

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I have seen several blogs and forum entries elsewhere state that because NTFS volumes do not support linux ownership or permissions, they cannot be used for anonymous ftp upload through the vsftpd program.  

IT can be done and here's how to get it working:

In this example, I have an external NTFS Gigabyte drive that I called "Store01".  This volume contains a directory called "/ftp".  Anonymous ftp clients should be able to upload to what is seen thru FTP as "/ftp/pub", and I want these files to actually show up in /ftp on my external NTFS drive.

The first requirement is that vsftpd wants the anonymous root directory to be owned by ftp:ftp

You'll need to find the right id so look in the user file to find the id for ftp. In this case:
cat /etc/passwd

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Again, in this case my system ftp is userid 14

Next look in the groups file to find the id for the ftp group:
cat /etc/group

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In this example, the ftp group is 50

Next, look to see what device name my NTFS volume has:
fdisk -l

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On my system, my NTFS volume is shown to be called: /dev/sdc1

Now create a mount point for it thus (I'm arbitrarily calling it "Store01":
mkdir /mnt/Store01

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in /etc/fstab, this line gets the NTFS volume mounted at /mnt/Store01:
/dev/sdc1    /mnt/Store01    ntfs-3g    nls=utf8,auto,user,rw,uid=14,gid=50,umask=0000,defaults 0 0

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Note that it is going to belong to user 14, which is ftp on my system, and group 50, which is ftp on my system.  VSFTPD requires that anonymous upload directories to belong to ftp:ftp

Now define a mount point you want to use as your ftp anonymous root:
mkdir /var/ftp
                      chown root:root /var/ftp
                      mkdir /var/ftp/pub
                      chown ftp:ftp /var/ftp/pub

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Notice /var/ftp is owned by root:root, and therefore cannot be written to by vsftpd.  This is a requirement of vsftpd for a ROOT anonymous directory, that the anonymous root directory not be writable. So, /var/ftp is what I'm going to use as the anonymous root directory.
But /var/ftp/pub is writeable by vsftpd.  It appears to anonymous users as a "pub" directory on the FTP site where they can write files.

So add this line to /etc/fstab, which will point /var/ftp/pub (the anonymous writable directory) to the /ftp folder on my NTFS volume:
/mnt/Store01/ftp    /var/ftp/pub    auto    bind 0 0

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And finally, in /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf, this line:
anon_root=/var/ftp

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Now an anonymous user can upload into the "pub" directory, on the anonymous FTP site.  Files uploaded there will appear in /ftp on my NTFS volume.
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Comments (2)

Commented:
Hi Carman23,

I'm a Page Editor for EE and I'll be helping you get your article published. I'll look through it shortly. Just wanted to let you know it's in the process.

And sorry for the delay.

Best,
MH

Author

Commented:
Oh yes, thanks for doing that.

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