Hi all. Like the title states, I am in need of a specific type of SFTP client. At work, we've inplemented an LTSP server and we're all switching to thin clients.

I've been asked to find an SFTP client that meets these specifications:

- It can only be managed by an administrator. In other words, only the admin can add new servers, usernames, and passwords

- It cannot allow password revelation

- The password file must be encrypted

- Obviously, it must run under Linux

I've never seen a client like this, and I'm under the impression that it simply doesn't exist. Any ideas?

of course you can use the system already in place for ssh key pair authentication
but the only thing i can think of to do to disable the normal sftp like login to anywhere is to
hack the source to the regular sftp and recompile without those options..
this would be difficult because ssh is so complex and can use so many different means of authentication etc and it's all so well intigrated the source code is rather hard to read (at least for me)
look at sftp.c line # 1364 there you find the main()
perhaps someone schooled with the use of optarg can show what to disable to accomplish what you want

one thing to note is most implementations of ssh sftp is through direct calls to the ssh sftp client itself.
so if you take away ssh sftp all those go broken.

very few people actually write ssh sftp clients themselves from scratch.. mainly i guess because ssh2 is a rather complex protocol .. i tried it once and didn't get very far.

there is however an earlier version of sftp you find sometimes on the net from before ssh that does things differently and i think will not work with ssh ?? i think ? not sure. or possibly ssh can accomodate those clients as well ?

I should have specified that I'm looking for a preexisting sftp client. I'm not going to write on outside of company time as it is not in my best interest. Also this is going to be for a bunch of windows users. Windows users characteristicly fear the command line much less any other kind of change to what they already know, so it would need to have the standard two window gui.

Is there any other way to securely compose ftp transactions?

Thanks

you could try using gftp.

As much as I enjoy gftp, the ssh support is quirky and unstable.

I'm wondering, is it possible to secure transmit regular ftp transactions and would learning how a chroot jailing works help my cause with this.

i don't think it's possible to securely use regular 1983 ftp

you could controll sftp with roles based access controll ?