Hey everyone, I was sure where to post this so I thought I'd give the general forum a try as it doesn't really have to do with linux in particular.

Anyways, here's the situation....

I've put TLS security on my ftp server (vsftp). I would like to make this method required, however I have some clients that currently use Internet Explorer to connect to the ftp site by typing

ftp://<user>@<domain>

If I restrict the ftp site to only allow connections with TLS this method no longer works.

Is there a way to use a web browser to connect to a FTP server that requires TLS?

I don't know what TLS is, but I access my linux box from Windows using sftp. I found a really nice (free) Windows GUI client that does sftp---I think is is something like WinSCP. Maybe is includes the TLS protocol....?

Try Google--that is how I found the Windows sftp client.

Take a look at PuTTY

Here are the PuTTY files themselves:

• * PuTTY (the Telnet and SSH client itself)
• * PSCP (an SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy)
• * PSFTP (an SFTP client, i.e. general file transfer sessions much like FTP)
• * PuTTYtel (a Telnet-only client)
• * Plink (a command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends)
• * Pageant (an SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink)
• * PuTTYgen (an RSA and DSA key generation utility).

From what I understand TLS is an extension of SSL, whereas sftp is ftp using ssh, therefore I'm guessing that each sftp client requires a login. I don't really want to go this way, right now all ftp users have very restrictive rights (nologin) that I would to keep. I can use FileZilla as a windows client and it works great, however the problem arises in that some of my clients (in the human sense) will not want to download and learn another program (FileZilla) when they have been using their web browser previously. If I had it my way they would just use FileZilla and that would be the end of it.

If you don't want to give your users login shell, but want to use secure ftp, consider looking at rssh:

Descripion of Debian package rssh:
So, by setup rssh you can allow your users cat use any sftp client, without direct access to shell on server.

Thanks fireant, I'll take a look at it.