Hello,
I need to set a server up for users to be able to upload files with sftp and with certificate based authentication.
The users shouldnt be able to open terminals, browse the directory structure or anything like that, only upload files to a folder and rename them to another folder when upload is complete.

how can the server be set up for this purpuse without allowing ssh and ideally with account management separate from the OS?

was looking at vsftpd but I cant figure out whether this is supported and how.

Help appreciated!

well you need to work out if you want ftp or sftp. sftp is a subsystem of ssh, and is not compatible with ftp at all. vsftpd with a chroot jail can definitely do exactly what you want, and sftp can also do what you want, but they are not the same thing. Actually, I'm not sure how easy it is to use virtual users in ssh, but it's a very standard thing with servers like vsftpd.

1 members found this post helpful.

I want sftp.

Which rules out vsftpd is what you are saying, right?

yes, sftp would just about exclusively provided by OpenSSH. You could authenticate from a secondary source with ssh, however it would, as I understand the architectures, it would have to be the same authentication as SSH in general, which would probably be an issue. a separate instance of ssh might suffice, but you've need to change the pam service name, which I've never looked into to know if it's feasible at all.

1 members found this post helpful.

You need to google a bit to find them, but there are a TON of pages on how to do exactly this with different versions of OpenSSH. You do NOT need any other software, OpenSSH has all you need.

Example:
http://adamsworld.name/chrootjailv5.php
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/590
http://www.howtoforge.com/chrooted-s...l-debian-lenny

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for guiding me in the right direction, Got it running with certificates and all.

oh, nice. Where is your user base kept?