How to Share Files Between Linux Systems
In today’s world, most of us have more
than one computer device in the house. There is often at least one
desktop PC and several laptops connected to the home network. And more
recently, tablet computers have been introduced to our networks. Setting
up internet access on all these devices is usually a pretty easy and
standard task. But when it comes to sharing files between devices,
things can become a little more difficult and often require a little
more technical knowledge.
It is true that there are cloud options
which have flooded the market, such as Dropbox. But cloud options
require you to be connected to the internet at all times and use your
internet connection bandwidth for file synchronization and transfers.
That can often be time consuming when you’re dealing with large media
files and directories. And of you’re on a budget internet plan, it could
also be costly due to the bandwidth being used for the file
transfer(s).
One of the oldest forms of transferring
files between computer systems is using the FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
method. The method of FTP was originally developed in the early 1970′s.
Although today’s revisions are slightly improved from that of the
original protocol, the concept is basically the same. And despite its
age, FTP has aged gracefully and is still relied upon today from
enterprise, universities and many businesses around the world.
For today’s How To, I’ll show you how
you can share your own computers files with other computers on your home
network and also the internet. So regardless of where you are or what
device you’re accessing from, you can have full access to all your own
files at all times.
The first thing we’ll need to to is install the required package to get the job done. The package is vsftpd.
That’s the actual FTP server daemon required to run for other computers
to access the computer running the FTP server. And this can be
installed using the following command in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install vsftpd
Once the package is downloaded and
installed, we need to make a few simple changes to the vsftpd
configuration file which is located at /etc/vsftpd.conf
To make the required changes, the easiest way is via your terminal by using the following command:
sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf
The first thing we need to do is secure
the FTP server access from any incoming Anonymous connection attempts.
Scroll down to the section of the configuration file and ensure the
following setting looks like this:
anonymous_enable=NO
And now we need to allow local access
for the FTP server. Scroll down to the section of the configuration file
and ensure the following setting looks like this:
local_enable=YES
Now just save and exit the nano editor.
Before we actually have access to the
FTP server, we must make a few easy changes to the firewall to actually
allow for other computers to access the FTP server. If you’re using
Ubuntu, then chances are you’re probably using ufw for
your system firewall. All you need to do to allow access to the FTP
server is type in the following command in to your terminal:
sudo ufw enable
This will ensure the firewall is active and running at system startup. Now type the following:
sudo ufw allow 21
This will open port 21 in the firewall
to allow for access to the FTP server. If you do not open this port,
other computers will not be able to access your FTP server.
Now that we’ve enabled access via
software firewall, we must also enable access via your home network
router so that you can access the FTP server over the internet. This
will vary depending on your router, so you may have to refer to the
router manual to perform these changes.
You need to open port 21 in your
router’s firewall and port forward port 21 (FTP) requests to the FTP
server’s local IP address. In this instance, the local IP address I am
using is 192.168.0.2. But this will vary for every home network.
So now that we’ve installed the FTP
server, configured the settings for access and enabled access via both
the software and hardware firewall, it’s now time to see whether our FTP
server works. If you have followed the above instructions step-by-step,
then everything should work correctly. If for some reason you can not
connect to the server, the most likely issue will be your firewall
settings. Be sure to check over the settings again and ensure you have
configured them correctly.
For some simple testing, we need to jump
on to a different computer system. For our test, we will boot up
Nautilus File Manager as it has built in support for FTP access and
other methods of server access. But if you prefer to use a different FTP
client, then I’d recommend you give Filezilla a try as it’s an
excellent standalone FTP client.
Launch Nautilus and go to File >
Connect to Server. And for Service type, change the option to FTP (with
login). In the server setting, you’ll need to type the IP address of the
computer we just set up the FTP server on. For this test, I used the
local IP 192.168.0.2, but use whatever your own system is using. And
also remember, if you are accessing your FTP server over the internet,
you need to enter the IP address of the internet connection and not the
local IP address. Once you’ve typed in the correct IP address for the
server, we need to enter Port 21 for access. In the folder setting, just
type in home. And upon login to the FTP server, it will take you
directly the /home directory of the file system. And the Username
setting is pretty obvious, just type your username to login to the FTP
server. Once all of the information is entered, just click Connect and
Nautilus should now connect to the FTP server. It will prompt you for
your password. Once you enter your password, Nautilus will open up the
FTP server directory just like any other local directory on the system.
And you should now have full access to your server via FTP.
For security reasons, we did not allow
write support via FTP for this How To. But you can Copy any file on the
system using FTP. Once you have finished copying your files, you should
always close the connection. In Nautilus, this is done exactly the same
as unmounting any other removable drive/media. On the left-hand side
pane, you will see an eject icon, click this and Nautilus will
disconnect from the FTP server.
That’s it. You now have a full
functioning FTP server running on your network which can be accessed via
any other computer on your home network or over the internet.
Generally speaking, FTP is a rather safe
method for transferring files between computer systems for general
files that home users will be transferring. Some experts warn of the
concerns in the way that FTP transmits passwords. Don’t worry, if you
are the security conscious type (which is not a bad thing), that’s fine
because we also have that base covered with a How To Share Files Between
Linux Systems via SSH, using the very secure SSH protocol. You can
check out that “How To” next week.
