Verbose vsFTP Logging?? (eek!)

BSCItech · 02-09-2004, 03:23 PM

Hello all,

My question: Can a verbose log be produced with vsFTP and How?
(Mandrake 9.1.4 w/ vsFTPd 1.02-02)

I've been tooling around the Internet for days looking for a way to make vsFTP produce any kind of verbose log file.

Personally, i dont care if i have to sort through an individual session echo, but i need much more logging than is being produced now (single upload/download entires).

If logging is not available through vsFTP directly, can it be consolidated from other system logs?

Here's what i need, let me know if vsFTP can do it, or if I need to go to another ftp daemon:

1) Logging by user: LogIn/Out time, Uploaded filename with path and size info.
2) Successful/Failed uploads/downloads with time requested and time ended (failed).
3) IP address of user (standard)

Please recommend the most secure ftp daemon that will supply verbose enough logging to obtain this information (I can use PERL or another logging parser to get the desired records, but Legal dept wants this capability installed ASAP )

Thanks in advance!

-JonG

sopiaz57 · 08-26-2004, 11:00 AM

John, i would very much like to know more about this issue also. Currently my vsftp logs only tell me file uploads and downloads, i want more detailed info.

Any help would be great!!

Thanks

BSCItech · 08-26-2004, 11:26 AM

Sopiaz57:

Edit your vsftp.conf file for these entries:

# Activate logging of uploads/downloads.
xferlog_enable=YES
#
# You may override where the log file goes if you like. The default is shown
# below.
xferlog_file=/users/vsftp_nobody/vsftpd.log
#
# If you want, you can have your log file in standard ftpd xferlog format
xferlog_std_format=NO

#The log_ftp_protocol=YES will log every FTP protocol transaction between the client and the server (this is the most detailed log you can get).
log_ftp_protocol=YES

Hope this helps others who are having this issue (took me nearly a week to find this on google and the help/man files

).

-JonG

sopiaz57 · 08-26-2004, 12:48 PM

Jon, I added "log_ftp_protocol=YES " to my vsftpd.conf and stopped/started the server, still no verbose logging.

sopiaz57 · 08-26-2004, 12:55 PM

AH, heres the prob.

log_ftp_protocol
When enabled, all FTP requests and responses are logged, providing the option xferlog_std_format is not enabled. Useful for debugging.

sopiaz57 · 08-26-2004, 01:41 PM

After fooling around a bit, I realized that I never even needed to add this directive,

log_ftp_protocol =yes

all you need to do is comment out this directive

xferlog_std_format=YES

is this true for your install??

BSCItech · 08-26-2004, 09:23 PM

Tried that on my Mandrake9 and the only change was the formatting of the (successful) upload/download entries (doesnt log anything more than the original, just logs it differently).

Then again, I got the logging working back in early march04, so i havent realy played much with it. (once it works, clients wont usually pay for 'inquiring minds" to roam).

right now the "debugging" level logging works fine (and provides C.Y.A. in blame-game situations)... I just use a webpage-based pearl script to parse out the reports that people want from the log file.

Anyway, hope this helped you get the logging you were looking for.

l8r