This page shows how to install a SFTP server on a CentOS 6 64-bit machine so that you can connect to it using a SFTP client like FileZilla.
Notice that this is not the same as FTPS (which uses SSL) and it is not FTP (plain old FTP). SFTP is FTP running over an SSH connection. Since CentOS 6.4 already has SSH server installed, all we have to do is configure the SSHD process to allow FTP over SSH.
You must have a CentOS machine already set up in accordance with the the “Install CentOS 6” guide.
Assuming that the root ftp directory that will have all the ftp targets in it. In this example, we will setup a user called testuser.
groupadd sftpusers groupadd sftp useradd -d /home/sftp -g sftp sftp echo "sftp:new_password" | chpasswd
Add test account.
NEW_USERNAME=testuser mkdir -p /opt/ftpdata/$NEW_USERNAME/$NEW_USERNAME useradd -d /opt/ftpdata/$NEW_USERNAME/ -s /bin/false -g sftpusers -G sftp $NEW_USERNAME echo "$NEW_USERNAME:new_password" | chpasswd passwd chown $NEW_USERNAME:sftp /opt/ftpdata/$NEW_USERNAME/$NEW_USERNAME chown root:sftp /opt/ftpdata/$NEW_USERNAME/ chmod g+w /opt/ftpdata/$NEW_USERNAME/$NEW_USERNAME
Open up /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Comment out the following line in
# Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
Replace it with this line:
Subsystem sftp internal-sftp
Then add the following set of lines to the very bottom of the file:
cat << EOF >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config Match Group sftpusers PermitRootLogin no ChrootDirectory /opt/ftpdata/%u X11Forwarding no AllowTCPForwarding no ForceCommand internal-sftp EOF
su - service sshd restart
chcon -Rv --type=httpd_sys_content_t /opt/ftpdata
Then reboot the server.