I have been working for a few weeks on a peace of software that transfers files using FTP. I have looked at the FTP Server page and noticed that the FTP that Ubuntu uses does not support a secure connection. I was hoping someone could tell me if Ubuntu relay does not support FTP Security that is in IETF's RFC 2228 and RFC 4217, or did I miss-understand Ubuntu's documentation.
21 Answer
I don't know which FTP server you've looked at but there are several available. For example proftpd is available for Ubuntu and offers SSL.
Apart from don't confuse the various protocols:
- FTP: the old file transfer protocol which has different TCP connections for commands and data and which is a pain to use when different networks or firewalls are involved. But, it has easy support for anonymous connections and often also supports users which have nothing to do with the system users.
- FTPS: the FTP protocol secured with SSL/TLS. More secure but even more painful to make it work if multiple networks or firewalls are involved.
- SFTP: file transfer over the SSH protocol. This is something completely different to FTP and FTPS. It uses only a single TCP connection and is usually easy to tunnel. But, anonymous connections or using user accounts which are not also system accounts are usually not supported by the implementations.
