I am completely new and looking for an FTP Server to run on Linux Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
 

I think the title says it all, im very new to linux and not much experience, i was just wondering if anybody had any information on which one is the best to use/most secure, or any other useful tips!

pure-ftpd or wu-ftpd may already be installed.

Try and check the result, if not present, you should be able to install either in short order.

Walk-through here...

ok, thanks. the command brings up a list of commands that i can use, that means everything is there set up and ready to go. I think that there was an issue with my friend connecting, he said he couldnt 'ping' my computer. Any clues as to what this may be, ive heard that it could be my permissions on my firewall?

In WAYY over my head here, appreciate the reply though.

If your friend could int reach your system ,Its firewall issue of your side.Check whether you had opened the Port 20 & 21 (vsftp)


#iptables -L ---> check the status of opened ports &whether you had blocked icmp through firewall

Try to install vsftpd in ubuntu .Look after the link

http://www.noob2geek.com/linux/setup...debian-ubuntu/

I don't want to go too basic here, but I'm not sure what your level of knowledge of computing/networking is since ping is a fairly basic thing, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding the question.

Pinging your computer means he tried to get your machine to reply to a certain type of request that would tell him (or anyone else) that your computer was online. He can ping either using your IP address or the hostname of your machine. Him not being able to ping your computer could be any number of things, depending on what he's pinging and from where, and how your network is set up. I think we'd need more information to give you any really useful info, like what your computer is sitting behind (cable modem for example), what your network looks like, what your friend is doing to test (if only ping, what is he trying to ping), etc.

If you install OpenSSH's server, that will get you SFTP without needing to spend time on configuration. Your distro will have it in the repository. Unlike FTP, SFTP is actually secure. FTP still gets a lot of attention because it is so difficult to set up and is quite insecure. SFTP is the easy, secure way to transfer files.

in addition to the above 2 posts, if your friend is able to ssh into your pc from their location then you should be all set (scp and sftp use the same default port and encryption protocol as ssh). you will probably need to forward port 22 traffic from your router to your server.

dont use the old, antiquated, deprecated and insecure ftp.