How To Install and Configure ProFTPD on Centos 7

In this article, we want to teach you How To Install and Configure ProFTPD on Centos 7.

ProFTPD is a highly configurable FTP server that uses an original design and implementation and is not a fork of ftpd.

ProFTPD is popular with many service providers for delivering updated access to useful web pages, without resorting to Unix shell accounts.

This is free and open-source software.

How To Install and Configure ProFTPD on Centos 7

To install ProFTPD on Centos 7, you need to log in to your server as a non-root user with sudo privileges. To do this, you can follow our article the Initial Server Setup with Centos 7.

Also, you need to set up a basic firewall. For this, you can visit our article Setup Firewall with firewalld on Centos 7.

Now follow the steps below to Set up ProFTPD on Centos 7.

Set up ProFTPD on Centos 7

First, you need to update your local package index with the following command:

sudo yum update -y

ProFTPD packages are available in the EPEL repository. So you need to install the Epel repository on Centos 7 with the command below:

sudo yum install epel-release -y

Then, use the following command to install ProFTPD on your server:

sudo yum install proftpd

Now you need to edit the ProFTPD configuration file to change the ServerName to your server’s hostname.

Open the file with your favorite text editor, here we use vi:

sudo vi /etc/proftpd.conf

Search for the ServerName directive and change it to your server’s hostname.

ServerName "server's hostname"

When you are done, save and close the file.

At this point, we assumed that you have enabled firewalld. Now you need to allow port 21 through the firewall with the command below:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=21/tcp

To apply the new rules, reload the firewall with the following command:

sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Manage ProFTPD Service on Centos 7

At this point, you can use the following command to start your ProFTPD service on Centos 7:

sudo systemctl start proftpd

Then, you can set the ProFTPD service to start at boot with the command below:

sudo systemctl enable proftpd

You can verify that your ProFTPD is active and running on Centos 7 by using the following command:

sudo systemctl status proftpd

In your output you will see:

Output
proftpd.service - ProFTPD FTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/proftpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2022-02-22 04:02:15 EST; 1min 43s ago
Main PID: 22444 (proftpd)
CGroup: /system.slice/proftpd.service
└─22444 proftpd: (accepting connections)