How to create an FTP account with SSH

One of the great features of the free reseller program is the opportunity to purchase one of our cheap and stable Virtual Private Server (VPS) with full root level server access, control panel (either DirectAdmin or WHM/cPanel) and SSH access. If you've already decided to have your VPS without a control panel or you feel more comfortable managing it through the secure shell, we are providing you now a way to easily create an FTP account using SSH access.

The whole process will consist of three commands. What we are essentially doing is creating a new group, a new user with its own home directory and attached to that group and as a final step assigning that user a password so that the FTP server can authenticate it upon receiving the connection request. For simplicity and consistency both the username and the group will be called 'vpsrp' in our example (you can, of course, rename those to whatever you find appropriate):

The first command (groupadd) creates the new group 'vpsrp' and places a corresponding entry in the /etc/group file. The second command (useradd) creates the new user 'vpsrp', assigns “/home/vpsrp” as its home directory (the “-m” option creates /home/ vpsrp if it does not already exist) and places 'vpsrp' under the group 'vpsrp'. The last command (passwd) adds a new password for our user 'vpsrp' and upon execution you will be prompted twice for the new password - make sure you type in a strong password containing both upper and lower case letters, digits, and special characters as well.

If you have your FTP service up and running, fire up your favorite FTP client, put your IP/domain as the host, followed by the username and password you've just created and you should be able to start uploading/downloading files in no time.

For more information and a complete list of options for the above Linux commands, please refer to the corresponding manual entries:

If you have any further questions regarding creation of FTP accounts under SSH, please check with our free reseller technical department, who are available 24/7 for you.