Virtual Hosting With Proftpd And MySQL (Incl. Quota) On Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 06/13/2008

This document describes how to install a Proftpd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota with this setup.

For the administration of the MySQL database you can use web based tools like phpMyAdmin which will also be installed in this howto. phpMyAdmin is a comfortable graphical interface which means you do not have to mess around with the command line.

This tutorial is based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. You should already have set up a basic Ubuntu 8.04 server system, as described in the first eight chapters of this tutorial: http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu8.04-lts

This howto is meant as a practical guide; it does not cover the theoretical backgrounds. They are treated in a lot of other documents in the web.

This document comes without warranty of any kind! I want to say that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

Make sure that you are logged in as root:

sudo su

1.1 Change The Default Shell

/bin/sh is a symlink to /bin/dash, however we need /bin/bash, not /bin/dash. Therefore we do this:

ln -sf /bin/bash /bin/sh

1.2 Disable AppArmor

AppArmor is a security extension (similar to SELinux) that should provide extended security. In my opinion you don't need it to configure a secure system, and it usually causes more problems than advantages (think of it after you have done a week of trouble-shooting because some service wasn't working as expected, and then you find out that everything was ok, only AppArmor was causing the problem). Therefore I disable it.

We can disable it like this:

/etc/init.d/apparmor stop
update-rc.d -f apparmor remove

2 Install MySQL And phpMyAdmin

This can all be installed with one single command:

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev phpmyadmin apache2

You will be asked to provide a password for the MySQL root user - this password is valid for the user root@localhost as well as root@server1.example.com, so we don't have to specify a MySQL root password manually later on (as was the case with previous Ubuntu versions):

New password for the MySQL "root" user: <-- yourrootsqlpassword

In addition to this, you will see the following question:

Web server to reconfigure automatically: <-- apache2

3 Install Proftpd With MySQL Support

For Ubuntu there is a pre-configured proftpd-mysql package available. Install it as a standalone daemon like this:

apt-get install proftpd-mysql

You will be asked the following question:

Run proftpd: <-- standalone

Then we create an ftp group (ftpgroup) and user (ftpuser) that all our virtual users will be mapped to. Replace the group- and userid 2001 with a number that is free on your system:

groupadd -g 2001 ftpgroup
useradd -u 2001 -s /bin/false -d /bin/null -c "proftpd user" -g ftpgroup ftpuser

4 Create The MySQL Database For Proftpd

Now we create a database called ftp and a MySQL user named proftpd which the proftpd daemon will use later on to connect to the ftp database:

mysql -u root -p

create database ftp;
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON ftp.* TO 'proftpd'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON ftp.* TO 'proftpd'@'localhost.localdomain' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Replace the string password with whatever password you want to use for the MySQL user proftpd. Still on the MySQL shell, we create the database tables we need:

USE ftp;

CREATE TABLE ftpgroup (
groupname varchar(16) NOT NULL default '',
gid smallint(6) NOT NULL default '5500',
members varchar(16) NOT NULL default '',
KEY groupname (groupname)
) TYPE=MyISAM COMMENT='ProFTP group table';

CREATE TABLE ftpquotalimits (
name varchar(30) default NULL,
quota_type enum('user','group','class','all') NOT NULL default 'user',
per_session enum('false','true') NOT NULL default 'false',
limit_type enum('soft','hard') NOT NULL default 'soft',
bytes_in_avail int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
bytes_out_avail int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
bytes_xfer_avail int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
files_in_avail int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
files_out_avail int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
files_xfer_avail int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0'
) TYPE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE ftpquotatallies (
name varchar(30) NOT NULL default '',
quota_type enum('user','group','class','all') NOT NULL default 'user',
bytes_in_used int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
bytes_out_used int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
bytes_xfer_used int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
files_in_used int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
files_out_used int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
files_xfer_used int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0'
) TYPE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE ftpuser (
id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
userid varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
passwd varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
uid smallint(6) NOT NULL default '5500',
gid smallint(6) NOT NULL default '5500',
homedir varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
shell varchar(16) NOT NULL default '/sbin/nologin',
count int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
accessed datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
modified datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
PRIMARY KEY (id),
UNIQUE KEY userid (userid)
) TYPE=MyISAM COMMENT='ProFTP user table';

quit;

As you may have noticed, with the quit; command we have left the MySQL shell and are back on the Linux shell.

BTW, (I'm assuming that the hostname of your ftp server system is server1.example.com) you can access phpMyAdmin under http://server1.example.com/phpmyadmin/ (you can use the IP address instead of server1.example.com) in a browser and log in as proftpd. Then you can have a look at the database. Later on you can use phpMyAdmin to manage your Proftpd server.

5 Configure Proftpd

Open /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf and disable IPv6 by setting UseIPv6 to off:

vi /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf

[...]
UseIPv6                         off
[...]

In the same file, add the following lines:

[...]
DefaultRoot ~

SQLBackend              mysql
# The passwords in MySQL are encrypted using CRYPT
SQLAuthTypes            Plaintext Crypt
SQLAuthenticate         users groups


# used to connect to the database
# databasename@host database_user user_password
SQLConnectInfo  ftp@localhost proftpd password


# Here we tell ProFTPd the names of the database columns in the "usertable"
# we want it to interact with. Match the names with those in the db
SQLUserInfo     ftpuser userid passwd uid gid homedir shell

# Here we tell ProFTPd the names of the database columns in the "grouptable"
# we want it to interact with. Again the names match with those in the db
SQLGroupInfo    ftpgroup groupname gid members

# set min UID and GID - otherwise these are 999 each
SQLMinID        500

# create a user's home directory on demand if it doesn't exist
CreateHome on

# Update count every time user logs in
SQLLog PASS updatecount
SQLNamedQuery updatecount UPDATE "count=count+1, accessed=now() WHERE userid='%u'" ftpuser

# Update modified everytime user uploads or deletes a file
SQLLog  STOR,DELE modified
SQLNamedQuery modified UPDATE "modified=now() WHERE userid='%u'" ftpuser

# User quotas
# ===========
QuotaEngine on
QuotaDirectoryTally on
QuotaDisplayUnits Mb
QuotaShowQuotas on

SQLNamedQuery get-quota-limit SELECT "name, quota_type, per_session, limit_type, bytes_in_avail, bytes_out_avail, bytes_xfer_avail, files_in_avail, files_out_avail, files_xfer_avail FROM ftpquotalimits WHERE name = '%{0}' AND quota_type = '%{1}'"

SQLNamedQuery get-quota-tally SELECT "name, quota_type, bytes_in_used, bytes_out_used, bytes_xfer_used, files_in_used, files_out_used, files_xfer_used FROM ftpquotatallies WHERE name = '%{0}' AND quota_type = '%{1}'"

SQLNamedQuery update-quota-tally UPDATE "bytes_in_used = bytes_in_used + %{0}, bytes_out_used = bytes_out_used + %{1}, bytes_xfer_used = bytes_xfer_used + %{2}, files_in_used = files_in_used + %{3}, files_out_used = files_out_used + %{4}, files_xfer_used = files_xfer_used + %{5} WHERE name = '%{6}' AND quota_type = '%{7}'" ftpquotatallies

SQLNamedQuery insert-quota-tally INSERT "%{0}, %{1}, %{2}, %{3}, %{4}, %{5}, %{6}, %{7}" ftpquotatallies

QuotaLimitTable sql:/get-quota-limit
QuotaTallyTable sql:/get-quota-tally/update-quota-tally/insert-quota-tally

RootLogin off
RequireValidShell off
[...]

Make sure that you replace the string password with the real password for the MySQL user proftpd in the line SQLConnectInfo!

Then restart Proftpd:

/etc/init.d/proftpd restart