vsftpd

About vsftpd

vsftpd is a GPL licensed FTP server for UNIX systems, including Linux. It is secure and extremely fast. It is stable. Don't take my word for it, though. Below, we will see evidence supporting all three assertions. We will also see a list of a few important sites which are happily using vsftpd. This demonstrates vsftpd is a mature and trusted solution.

Features

Despite being small for purposes of speed and security, many more complicated FTP setups are achievable with vsftpd! By no means an exclusive list, vsftpd will handle:

• Virtual IP configurations
• Virtual users
• Standalone or inetd operation
• Powerful per-user configurability
• Bandwidth throttling
• Per-source-IP configurability
• Per-source-IP limits
• IPv6
• Encryption support through SSL integration
• etc...

Online source / docs

Browse vsftpd's online source tree - including documentation. In particular, note the content of the EXAMPLE subdirectory. Also, here is an HTML version of the manual page which lists all vsftpd config options.

Download / support

The latest vsftpd release is v3.0.5, currently at https://security.appspot.com/downloads/vsftpd-3.0.5.tar.gz
When downloading, always check the GPG signatures, of course! https://security.appspot.com/downloads/vsftpd-3.0.5.tar.gz.asc
Releases are infrequent since bug reports are infrequent at this time. Also, the FTP protocol is sunsetting, which is probably not a terrible thing.

Is vsftpd the right server for me?

If your main requirement from an FTP server is one of the following things then yes, vsftpd is probably the FTP server you are looking for.

• Security
• Performance
• Stability

The only reason you might prefer a different FTP server to vsftpd is if you really need the configurability of one of the more bloated FTP servers. Having said this, note that vsftpd caters for the vast majority of use cases. Even if vsftpd appears to be missing a feature, it is often satisfied by an external component such as PAM or xinetd / tcp_wrappers. In this regard, vsftpd is being a small modular component in the proper spirit of UNIX. Finally, consider moving to vsftpd even if it means sacrificing some whacky feature of your current FTP server. The security, performance and stability gains are waiting for you.

What are people saying about vsftpd?

• The SAC team from SANS recommend vsftpd as the preferred secure FTP server: "For those of you looking for a secure FTP daemon alternative, the SAC team recommends vsftpd".
• IBM recommend vsftpd in their paper "Securing Linux Servers for Service Providers". It is top in a section entitled "Recommended FTP servers".
• RedHat praises the performance and scalability of vsftpd in a press release: "Individual servers handled more than 2,500 concurrent downloads"... "The other change was to use a very lightweight FTP daemon, vsftpd, designed for the demands placed on a server under this level of load".

What large sites are trusting vsftpd?

NOTE!! The following list is accurate as of Jun 2004 (things may change over time of course). This is just a small sample of lots of critical internet sites which use vsftpd.

• ftp.redhat.com
• ftp.suse.com
• ftp.debian.org
• ftp.freebsd.org
• ftp.gnu.org
• ftp.gnome.org
• ftp.kde.org
• ftp.kernel.org
• rpmfind.net
• ftp.linux.org.uk
• ftp.gimp.org
• ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de
• gd.tuwien.ac.at
• ftp.sunet.se
• ftp.ximian.com
• ftp.engardelinux.org
• ftp.sunsite.org.uk
• ftp.isc.org

Please sell me more on vsftpd security!

Certainly. vsftpd was designed and implemented from the ground up with security in mind.

1. It fixes fundamental design flaws present in most installations of wu-ftpd, proftpd and even bsd-ftpd by not over-using the dangerous root user.
2. It makes use of powerful security facilities such as capabilities and chroot.
3. It employs secure coding techniques to make buffer overflows a solved problem.
4. It is written by someone who is a vulnerability researcher.

For more details on why vsftpd is secure, see the distributed documentation files: Online copies are here:

• Overview
• Design
• Implementation
• Trust

Please sell me more on vsftpd performance!

Of course.

• A usenet poster finds vsftpd twice as fast as BSD-ftpd (which is itself no slouch, unlike wu-ftpd).
• Someone benchmarking vsftpd over localhost shifts 70Mbyte/sec, which in their case was more than the awesome TUX (55Mbyte/sec). (link lost)
• Someone bechmarking Linux's networking over gigabit ethernet is using vsftpd, and vsftpd scores 86Mbyte/sec. (link lost)
• Referring to RedHat's use of vsftpd, Alan Cox in his diary says " finally we have a scalable ftpd for Linux".

Here are a couple of graphs sent in by a satisfied user, running a large internet site with vsftpd.

Over the 24 hours, vsftpd has served 2.6TB (yes, terabytes) with a concurrent user count often over 1,500. This is on a single machine.

Contact

NEW! There's a #vsftpd IRC channel at irc.freenode.net. People there may be able to answer questions.

I'm buried alive in vsftpd mail :-( You could try mailing me: Chris Evans, scarybeasts@gmail.com (try and read the FAQ first)! Please don't be disappointed if your vsftpd mail does not get answered; I can only answer a small percentage.