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setting up anonmymous FTP (New Riders)
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Setting up Anonymous FTP By John P. Mulligan

Setting up Anonymous FTP on your Solaris system will allow users to perform file transfers anonymously. This tip, excerpted from Solaris 8 Essential Reference, by John P. Mulligan, provides step-by-step instructions for how to configure the tool.


Anonymous FTP can be set up under Solaris by performing the following steps. Remember, however, that Anonymous FTP opens up your system to allow anonymous users to perform file transfers. In general, Anonymous FTP should be considered a security concern and should be enabled only if it is absolutely necessary. Also, to allow FTP to work properly in a chroot environment, make sure that the file system containing the FTP home directory is not mounted as nosuid.
  1. Create the FTP home directory structure:
    mkdir /export/ftp/pub
    mkdir /export/ftp/bin
    mkdir /export/ftp/dev
    mkdir /export/ftp/etc
    mkdir /export/ftp/usr
    mkdir /export/ftp/usr/lib
  2. Add the ls command to the FTP bin directory:
    cp /usr/bin/ls /export/ftp/bin
    chmod 111 /export/ftp/bin/ls
  3. Copy the necessary libraries into the FTP directory structure:
    cp /usr/lib/ld.so* /export/ftp/usr/lib
    cp /usr/lib/libc.so.1 /usr/lib/libdl.so.1
    /export/ftp/usr/lib
    cp /usr/lib/libintl.so.1 /usr/lib/libw.so.1 /export/ftp/usr/lib
    cp /etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/netconfig /export/ftp/etc
  4. Copy the necessary files into the FTP directory structure to resolve NIS names:
    cp /usr/lib/nss*.so.1 /export/ftp/usr/lib
    cp /usr/lib/libnsl.so.1 /export/ftp/usr/lib
    cp /usr/lib/straddr.so /export/ftp/usr/lib
    cp /etc/nsswitch.conf /export/ftp/etc
  5. Set the permissions for the /export/ftp/usr/lib and /export/ftp/etc directories:
    chmod 555 /export/ftp/usr/lib/*
    chmod 444 /export/ftp/etc/*
  6. Set the permissions of all the created directories:
    chmod 555 /export/ftp/usr/lib
    chmod 555 /export/ftp/usr
    chmod 555 /export/ftp/bin
    chmod 555 /export/ftp/dev
    chmod 555 /export/ftp/etc
    chmod 755 /export/ftp/pub
    chmod 555 /export/ftp
  7. Add the following line to the /etc/passwd file:
    ftp:x:30000:30000:Anonymous FTP:/export/ftp:/bin/false
  8. Add the following line to the /etc/shadow file:
    ftp:NP:6445::::
  9. Make sure that everything is owned by root and not by FTP:
    chown -R root /export/ftp
Learn more about Solaris 8 Essential Reference, published by New Riders.