This tutorial explains how to setup and use an SFTP server on CentOS. Before I start, let me explain what actually SFTP represents and what it is used for. Currently, most people know that we can use normal FTP for transferring, downloading or uploading data from a server to client or client to server. But this protocol is getting hacked easily (if TLS is not used) by anonymous intruders as it the ports are wide open to anyone. Therefore, SFTP has been introduced to as another alternative to meet the main purpose to strengthen the security level.
SFTP stands for SSH File Transfer Protocol or Secure File Transfer Protocol. It uses a separate protocol packaged with SSH to provide a secure connection.
1. Preliminary Note
For this tutorial, I am using CentOS 7 in the 64bit version. The same steps will work on CentOS 6 as well. The tutorial result will show how a client can be provided with access to the SFTP server but unable to login to the server itself by SSH.
2. SFTP Installation
Unlike normal FTP, there’s no need to install additional packages in order to use SFTP. We just require the prebuild SSHd package that got already installed during installation on the server. Therefore, just check to confirm if you already have the required SSH package. Below are the steps:
Run:
rpm -qa|grep ssh
The output should be similar to this:
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -qa|grep sshlibssh2-1.4.3-10.el7_2.1.x86_64openssh-7.4p1-13.el7_4.x86_64openssh-server-7.4p1-13.el7_4.x86_64openssh-clients-7.4p1-13.el7_4.x86_64
That’s all, now we’ll go on how to make the SFTP configuration.
继续阅读