HDS ViewStation System Administrator's Guide

A Hypertext Document


FTP File Transfer Protocol on Sun Systems

This page discusses the FTP file transfer protocol on Sun systems. .

FTP File Transfer Protocol

FTP is normally included with the Sun software, but it is often not started with the Sun installation; refer to the /etc/inetd.conf file for an FTP line. You should check to see if the FTP daemon is running; check for a comment character on the FTP line in the /inetd.conf file. The following line should be present in the /etc/inetd.conf file.

ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/etc/in.ftpd in.ftpd

You probably need to restart the inetd process.

FTP requires a valid username and a real password to run, so the appropriate accounts should be set up on the Sun (normal login accounts and passwords are sufficient, but they must be entered in the ViewStation's Setup Mode Remote Hosts fields to be used for file loading).

FTP also verifies the user's shell with the getusershell() query to the /etc/shells file. Sun does not create this file in normal installation. Unix System V Release 4 replaces the Bourne shell (sh) with the Korn shell (ksh) as the standard shell. If the Korn shell is not added to the /etc/shells file, or this file doesn't exist, the query detects the Korn shell as invalid and the FTP request is denied. If you are using the Korn shell, you must make these changes.

Anonymous FTP File Transfer
Anonymous FTP file transfers do not require a password, but have other security limitations. All files to be transferred must be in a special anonymous FTP directory. Refer to your man pages for details about setting up an anonymous FTP account.

In summary, you must enter a "anonymous ftp" user in the password file (/etc/ passwd) with appropriate group and ownership limitations, and then use that anonymous ftp user's home directory as the root directory for file transfers.

Anonymous FTP file transfers initiate a chroot() call, so the new root directory is the home directory for the anonymous ftp user. In this case, as with "secure TFTP" above (see TFTP File Transfer Protocol), you must understand how these security mechanisms affect the entry of the HDSware path on the ViewStation. Your path on the ViewStation must take into account the new anonymous ftp root directory.

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