Using vsftpd

The FTP service has been around for decades. Back in the mid-1990s, FTP was actually the vast majority of internet traffic. Yes, its importance in terms of traffic volume decreased over time, but it's not only that. FTP, all by itself, is a completely open, plain-text protocol. The latest revision that's been included in all major distributions is called vsftpd, and it's been there for more than a decade now. We are going to focus on three scenarios in this recipe: getting vsftpd to work, getting vsftpd to work with a user's home directories, and – last but not least – making vsftpd secure by implementing TLS and certificates. Let's start!

Getting ready

Keep the cli1 and cli2 virtual machines powered on and let's continue using our shell. Let's make sure that the necessary packages are installed by using our standard commands. So, for Ubuntu, use this command:

apt -y install vsftpd

For CentOS, let's use...