root FTP user, how?

Howdy,

The only user that could do that is the root user. However, that's considered a huge security risk to allow root to login via FTP, since FTP is a plaintext protocol. The bad guys could sniff your password, and then login as your root user.

Because of that, all the FTP services come with root login disabled.

However, you could always login as root via SFTP, using a tool such as WinSCP. That would be a bit more secure, and allow you to edit all the files on your system.

-Eric

Why not editing that one thing via SSH login? :) Or through the Webmin file manager/editor module, for that matter. That's much faster and safer done than fiddling with ProFTPD's settings.

Being unfriendly is indeed the recommended way to get help here.

During all those hours of experimenting and breaking stuff, you didn't arrive at the idea to look through the ProFTPD module in Webmin? You'll find the necessary options there to enable FTP root access. And if you ask nicely, I might even tell you which those are.

Sorry, I also have to ask. Why not use sftp (which is different from ftps) instead ftp? All "ftp" apps can handle it, configuration is basically identical (just a different port). I am just asking out of curiosity (and not to convince you not to use ftp).

@helpmin: Mmh, I think you're both mixing things up there, and are not 100% correct. :)

For one, what you probably mean to be "identical" to FTP is FTPS. That's FTP over SSL. SFTP on the other hand is file transfer over SSH, which is considerably different.

Also, FTPS is not completely identical to FTP. On the client end maybe, but on server side you need to set up certificates and stuff. So it is somewhat more complicated.

Aside from that: Well if you have a server in your LAN which is not accessible from the outside, I guess it's okay to use FTP, also for root. Not a lot can go wrong then. :) Although I personally use Samba for file management, especially in the LAN. It's much more comfortable than FTP.

I only talked about ftp clients like winscp. Instead host and port 21 in Winscp you just use host port 22 and you have a secure connection (without configuring TLS etc). But my wording could have been better, I agree :-)

And to answer my own question, there is one reason. FTP is much fast than SCP.

PS

I like sshfs

WinSCP can do all of that, that's right. But not "all FTP apps", like you said, support SFTP. :) On the contrary. Usually, an FTP app does FTP(S), and that's it. WinSCP on the other hand is primarily an SFTP app, which happens to also support plain old FTP.

1. Go to Webmin
2. Open module ProFTPD Server
3. Open Denied FTP Users
4. Remove root
5. Opne Authentication
6. Enable Allow login by root
7. Save configuration
8. Reboot FTP server

We really do highly discourage this :-)

Using the user 'root' via FTP is highly insecure, is dangerous, and unnecessary, as one can simply use tools like WinSCP over SSH to securely administer a server.

-Eric

Hi, I have a problem with ftp. I'm using wordpress, today if we want to update plugin, activate plugin in wordpress, we have to put FTP information, while in Virtual min is disabled. What is the solution?

Try the Limits and Validation area, Validate Virtual Servers and the the Fix Permissions tab, choose the domain in question and fix. Sounds like you installed WP as root and your domain owner is being rejected.

Also regarding the earlier question always use sftp as root, winscp is fine. If your using Ubuntu you will need to edit a file for that to work.