ProFTPD vs. SSH

[bradhawk]

Okay, I am a newbie to setting up servers and working with them.

I followed the tutorial "The Perfect Server - Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon 7.1" to set up the server.

My question is: what is the difference between using FTP and using SSH? Doesn't SSH use a type of FTP protocol? If this is the case can't I use PUTTY on a client computer to access the server to run commands and transfer files? And if that is the case why do I need to have ProFTPD installed on my system? Let me know please.

Thanks for all help that I've have received thus far on these forums.

[falko]

You can use SSH to transfer files (the command is scp); in SSH all data (incl. passwords) is encrypted whereas in FTP it's unencrypted which is not very secure.
But to use SSH/scp, the users must have a shell account which is insecure if you don't know/trust your users, whereas FTP works without shell access.

[bradhawk]

So do I really need to use ProFTPD? I installed PUTTY on a client computer and was able to get into my server so that I could browse and edit files (via vi editor) which is what I wanted to be able to do. I haven't tried using the scp command yet. But I (the administrator) will be the only one that would be getting in via SSH and using the scp to transfer/edit files. Is ProFTPD easier? If so, how do I go about setting it up and using it? Also, I do want to create a page where users have to login then they can upload files. How would I go about creating that page?

Thanks for all help.

[volksman]

Sounds like you don't need FTP setup. Using SSH/SCP you can use an FTP client like Filezilla to connect via SSH/SCP to upload files if you need to. This is a very secure way of doing things and is not really much different than a standard FTP connection other than its all encrypted.

If you just want to shell in and edit files in the shell that is when you'd use putty.

As for a web page to allow users to upload you will either need to write a custom script (Perl or PHP are the most common) or download something prebuilt (sorry I don't know of any off hand but I'm sure there are plenty out there).

The only time you would want FTP is like Falko said: when you have users you don't fully trust (and I mean fully!). Otherwise FTP is likely the weak point of your server and the most likely thing to get exploited.

[sjau]

you could install mysecureshell which allso scp but not terminal login.