Virtual Hosting With Proftpd And MySQL (Incl. Quota) On Mandriva 2009.1

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
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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 Mandriva 2009.1. You should already have set up a basic Mandriva 2009.1system, for example as described in the first six chapters of this tutorial: https://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-mandriva-2009.1-free-x86_64-ispconfig-2

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.

2 Install MySQL And phpMyAdmin

First we update our package database:

urpmi.update -a

MySQL and phpMyAdmin can be installed with one single command:

urpmi MySQL MySQL-client phpmyadmin

By default, networking is not enabled in Mandriva 2009.1's MySQL package. We can change this by commenting out the line skip-networking in /etc/my.cnf:

vi /etc/my.cnf

[...]
# Don't listen on a TCP/IP port at all. This can be a security enhancement,
# if all processes that need to connect to mysqld run on the same host.
# All interaction with mysqld must be made via Unix sockets or named pipes.
# Note that using this option without enabling named pipes on Windows
# (via the "enable-named-pipe" option) will render mysqld useless!
#
#skip-networking
[...]

Afterwards, we create the system startup links for MySQL and Apache...

chkconfig mysqld on
chkconfig httpd on

... and start both services:

/etc/init.d/mysqld start
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Create a password for the MySQL user root (replace yourrootsqlpassword with the password you want to use):

mysqladmin -u root password yourrootsqlpassword
mysqladmin -h server1.example.com -u root password yourrootsqlpassword

3 Install Proftpd With MySQL Support

We can install ProFTPd with MySQL support as follows:

urpmi proftpd proftpd-mod_sql proftpd-mod_sql_mysql proftpd-mod_quotatab proftpd-mod_quotatab_sql

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.conf:

vi /etc/proftpd.conf

First uncomment the DefaultRoot ~ line (this makes that each FTP user is chrooted to his home directory):

[...]
# To cause every FTP user to be "jailed" (chrooted) into their home
# directory, uncomment this line.
DefaultRoot ~
[...]

Then comment out the following stanza (we will add quota settings at the end of the file):

[...]
#<IfModule mod_quota.c>
#    QuotaEngine on
#</IfModule>
[...]

At the end of the file, comment out the following stanza so that users can execute CHMOD actions through their FTP clients:

[...]
# Bar use of SITE CHMOD by default
#<Limit SITE_CHMOD>
#    DenyAll
#</Limit>

Finally, add the following setion at the end of the file:

[...]
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 we create the system startup links for Proftpd and start it:

chkconfig proftpd on
/etc/init.d/proftpd start

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