How to tell which of the two FTP server running is serving an FTP request?

ftp sftp vsftpd

6,568

sftp-server does not serve FTP requests. It is for SFTP, which is actually SSH and not FTP at all.

6,568

ysap

I've been a computers/computing enthusiast since many years ago. Started coding FORTRAN on punched cards, then moved to BASIC on my MC6809 based DRAGON-64 and then the x86 IBM-PC era. I had the opportunity of working on mainframes, minis, workstations, PC's and embedded hardware. Today I am doing mainly embedded coding - C and ASM on various processors, and on various programming environments and toolchains like MS Visual Studio, Eclipse CDT, ARM DS and more. Was lucky enough to be at the right time at the right place to get to work as a VLSI designer for a top tier chip company, working on a world class processor family. Always looking to solving problem in the most elegant way! - Yaniv Sapir

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

ysap over 1 year
I was asked to reconfigure and make some order in a FTP server which is operating on Ubuntu 10.04. I have root access to the machine.

When checking what server is running, I get:
```
# ps -ef | grep ftp
root      2287     1  0 Mar19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/vsftpd
root     26380 26369  0 Jun27 ?        00:00:02 /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
```
From the man pages I understand that vsftpd and sftp-server are both FTP server software. How can I tell which server is actually serving an FTP request from a remote machine?
ysap almost 12 years

OK, so does this mean that the only FTP server I have running is the vsftpd? If so why sftp is called sFTP? To quote from the sftp man page: " sftp is an interactive file transfer program, similar to ftp(1), which performs all operations over an encrypted ssh(1) transport."
dobey almost 12 years

Yes. The man page says that because it is similar to ftp. It allows for providing an ftp-like interface on top of ssh. But you cannot connect to it with a regular ftp connection.