Hello fellows,

It’s time to start talking about Microsoft Azure, cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications . . . A lot of Azure services will be covered in this “Tech Trainer Azure series”, and for today I decided to explain how to configure FTP on Ubuntu machine on Azure. That is something which I had to configure few times during last week.

Once when you install Ubuntu VM on Azure and want to configure FTP service, you have to know few thing:

  • FTP on Azure works in passive mode
  • FTP service on Linux not installed by default
  • FTP service configuration file must be changed
  • You have to create inbound firewall rules on Azure VM Network Security Groups

As a FTP service, I like to use VSFTPD. Installation is easy with command sudo apt-get install vsftpd. Once installed service, have to be configured. Configuration file is located to /etc/vsftpd.conf, and have to be changed with following parameters:

listen=YES
#anonymous_enable=YES
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
ls_recurse_enable=NO
dirmessage_enable=YES
use_localtime=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
xferlog_std_format=NO
log_ftp_protocol=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
chown_uploads=NO
xferlog_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log
ascii_upload_enable=NO
ascii_download_enable=NO
ftpd_banner=Welcome to Azure Ubuntu FTP service.
local_root=/home/ftp
pam_service_name=vsftpd
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/private/vsftpd.pem
pasv_enable=YES
pasv_min_port=60001
pasv_max_port=60002
port_enable=YES
pasv_addr_resolve=NO
file_open_mode=0666
local_umask=0022

*Some of configuration parameters, such as pasv port or ftpd_banner and variable and you can configure different.

After changing configuration file, run sudo service vsftpd restart in order to restart services and apply changes.

Inbound firewall rules have to be configured in following:

At the end, you need to create user and give him appropriate permissions.

 

Cheers!