I have some users that will be FTPing into a box to upload images for a website. I want the users to be locked in their respective image directories. What would be the best way to go about this?

My thought was to create the users and put a symlink in their home directories to their image directory. Then lock them in the home directory. Is their a better way? (Also, how do I lock them in the directory?)

You want to set up a chroot'd environment for ftp, so the users see the images directory as their root directory. I haven't done this on AIX myself, but it is pretty much the same as for Linux and other UNIXs so you can look around for how-tos.

Good Call. I'll check it out. Thanks for the help.

Well,

I do things a little different, may not be the best though:

1. Set the home directory for the userID to the specific directory (in your case, containing the images).

2. Assign Rsh to the userID (so that the userID cannot cd ..)

3. Apply ACL to that specific directory (owned by root for instance) to grant userID specific access.

For your comments/exploration.

How do I assign Rsh to the given userID? I am able to call it from the command line, but it only stays for that session. As soon as I logout its no longer applied.

Oh....

Not sure if i understood you correctly, if you were asking how to assign Rsh to a userID, here's how it can be done:

Method 1:

Well, you can use smitty user, select the option to show/change user characteristics, you can see the Initial Program -> you can point it to /usr/bin/Rsh instead of the default ksh.
(Be sure to check if /usr/bin/Rsh exists in your system)

Method 2:

You may also want to do the direct way by just modifying the /etc/passwd file, the last entry in the line delimited by ':' to the path /usr/bin/Rsh.

Below shows an example for restricting userA to the designated ftp directory in /etc/passwd file:

userA:!:1234:1234::/publicFTP:/usr/bin/Rsh

Hope this helps.

Gotcha. Originally that is how I tried to set it up, however, when I set the 'initial program' to /usr/bin/Rsh I get the following:

Check "/etc/security/login.cfg" file
Error changing "shell" to "/usr/bin/Rsh" : Value is invalid.


So I'm guessing I need to add "/usr/bin/Rsh" to the login.cfg as one of the available shells?

Hmmm......I added /usr/bin/Rsh to the login.cfg, but I can't login with the user.

Hmmm.....

Perhaps you would like to take a look at the following link and see if anything is OK?

http://publibn.boulder.ibm.com/doc_l...cted_shell.htm

@duanyu : my browser did not like the doc_...icted_ part of the link you gave
(http://publibn.boulder.ibm.com/doc_...icted_shell.htm).
Could you find the full link name, or give the way you reached it ?

Clicking on the link worked for me.

Rsh is effectively the bourne shell (bsh) in restricted mode. If users prefer the korn shell, you can also use ksh -r to invoke ksh in restricted mode.

My apologies for not maintaing the text for the link in proper.
However, you can still reach it by clicking on the link itself.

Thanks iainr for verifying.