How do I set up FTP on localhost?

Question

On my old machine (back on Lucid!) I used XAMPP for local dev work. XAMPP installed everything for you, including setting up FTP to your localhost (/var/www) directory, since permissions don't allow you to write directly to it.

I have a new machine running Precise, and decided to do things the grown-up way. I installed everything using tasksel, and got apache, php, mysql, and phpmyadmin up and running. But it's kind of a pain to have to create and edit all my files via gksudo gedit on the command line, and sooner or later I'm going to have to upload images.

How can I set up FTP so that I can "upload" files to my localhost server?

Edit to add

Followed the first video, but when I got to the point where he was creating files (around 7:25 in), I get hung up. Here's what my terminal looks like when I try to get into the /srv directory (which I verified does exist in Nautilus):

What do I need to do to get past this?

Solution 1

Well, I was just trying to do this exact same thing...

I looked it up on Youtube, he explains how to do it with a GUI. It is basically the same thing with a CLI, if that's what you are using, just all with text- obviously.

Here is part one editing the .conf file for vsftpd:

Configuring FTP in Ubuntu - Part 1

And part two, where he finishes adding permissions and access control:

Configuring FTP in Ubuntu - Part 2

Best of luck...

Solution 2

I wanted to get something similar to a trick of quickly starting HTTP server

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

which I use to download (not upload) files, i.e. I wanted something like this but for FTP server

• no security concerns about my network (e.g. localhost)
• no or minimal installation
• no configuration, like creating users, etc.
• no system-wide registration, I need this ftpd only once
• quickly start server and serve for the current path

I ended up with

sudo pip install pysendfile 
sudo pip install git+git://github.com/giampaolo/pyftpdlib 
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/giampaolo/pyftpdlib/master/demo/unix_ftpd.py 
sudo /usr/bin/python unix_ftpd.py

Your working folder should be the one to serve into. Tip: checkout on github there are more demos with other/no authorization handlers. Performance wise this python based server is not that bad if compared to vsftpd

Comments

[JohnB]

Thanks for the links. I followed the process to the letter, but got hung up around 7:26 in the first video - where he goes into the /srv folder to create files for testing. When I try that, it asks me for a password, which I obviously don't have since we haven't gotten to the point of creating accounts yet. (And yes, I did enable anonymous access in the .conf file.) Any idea why that's happening or how to get past it?

[Enigmatic]

That one I'm not to sure about. I just know that the video worked for me. Sorry. :/

[V. Sareen]

ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=518293 here's a non video

[Yauhen Yakimovich]

note that the demo i downloaded does no jailroot to the working directory.. but gives access to the whole root fs