FTP users sharing same home directory

[phreud]

I've been thinking about how to setup my VSFTP server the way I want it. I want several users being able to login (not anonymously) with username and password. All users should be "chrooted" to the same directory and confined there.

I was thinking of setups using all kinds of tricks, like virtual users or chrooting everybody to a predefined directory. But, when I think about it, can't I just add users with adduser, giving them the same home dir and no shell (-s nologin)? Are there any problems with this? Will they be able to login at all if I don't set a shell?

Should I be using the -d flag to specify the (shared) home directory? I'm not really sure I understand the semantics in the man page.

Thanks in advance!

[sniper007]

Originally Posted by phreud

But, when I think about it, can't I just add users with adduser, giving them the same home dir and no shell (-s nologin)?

why not? It should work

Originally Posted by phreud

Will they be able to login at all if I don't set a shell?

just set /usr/sbin/nologin for shell and ftp access will work at all

[stukov]

I have a similar setup but with smb instead of ftp and it works great. Just make sure to set the appropriate umask.

[phreud]

Originally Posted by stukov

I have a similar setup but with smb instead of ftp and it works great. Just make sure to set the appropriate umask.

Ok. The same directory will actually be a smb share aswell. I've chosen a somewhat risky samba-setup though, allowing any user from within the LAN to access it without using a username and password. Since I'm the only user in that network I thought it would be fine anyway.

I'll have to read up on umask. I never seem to really get it :-)

Thanks for your replies!

[stukov]

phreud, for samba, you can set your umask directly in your config file. I would have pasted it here for you but the mainboard of that machine just crashed and burned this morning. I'll paste it as soon as the box is repaired.

Good luck.

[phreud]

Originally Posted by stukov

I have a similar setup but with smb instead of ftp and it works great. Just make sure to set the appropriate umask.

Have you gotten around the fact that whenever you add a user to the same home dir, that dir gets chown to the new user? I end up having to chown the home dir every time I've added a new user.

Thanks!

[stukov]

My users do not have access to their own home. They have access via samba to a "shared folder" instead. My users do not connect via ssh and do not need their own files. It's a workgroup only machine.