[gunnar]

I have checked the Allow FTP Access in the Sharing control panel and can seem to connect via the Connect To... menu item in the Finder, but how do I enable a guest account and make some folders such as a drop box where people can leave files via an FTP program?

<small>[ 07-23-2002, 10:20 PM: Message edited by: gunnar ]</small>

[Camelot]

To enable anonymous ftp, you need to create a user called 'ftp' in the user database. Use NetInfo Manager to create a new group called 'ftp', then create a new user 'ftp'. Set the password to "*", set the shell to "/dev/null" (to prevent users from logging in at a shell), set the group to 'ftp', and set the home directory to /Users/ftp

Then create a folder /Users/ftp

If you want to allow a public drop-box, create an 'incoming' directory, and set the permissions so that user 'ftp' can write to the directory but can't read it, for example:

chmod 733 /Users/ftp/incoming
chown root:ftp /Users/ftp/incoming

In this way the folder is owned by root, but users in group 'ftp' can write to the directory.

[simonmartin]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Originally posted by gunnar:
<strong>I have checked the Allow FTP Access in the Sharing control panel and can seem to connect via the Connect To... menu item in the Finder, but how do I enable a guest account and make some folders such as a drop box where people can leave files via an FTP program?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Gunnar,

I just went through this... (hope I'm remembering right...)

The quick and dirty way to get this up and running is to create a new user on your computer for the FTP account. You might call it "guest" with a password of "ftpguest". Do this in your system prefs/users. Make sure you don't alow the user to admin the computer.

Someone could then access the guest account with an ftp client at &lt;ftp://guest@theipaddressofyourbox&gt; They would then be asked for a password, in this case "ftpguest".

Note that they will have complete access to the guest account, including all the folders it contains. I guess they would also have access to your applications folder.

Personaly I would only alow access to trusted people, only activate the service when it was needed and move any uploads out of the guest account ASAP.

Hope this helps.

Simon

[rsh]

An option that has worked extremely well for a lot of people: <a href="http://crushftp.com/" target="_blank">Crush FTP</a>.

It puts a simple-to-use GUI on FTP setup, easily allows you to assign accounts and levels of access based on trust, and is bargain cheap to boot. The virtual directories feature is killer.

You can give it a try for free.

[Millennium]

If you do decide to let people upload anonymously (something I strongly advise against; it's a huge security hole), then watch your Uploads folder like a hawk. Particularly be on the lookout for invisible files and folders.

Otherwise, I'd suggest you use CrushFTP if you're really hell-bent on this. Although it's possible to set up anonymous FTP with the built-in FTP daemon, Apple left the GUI out for this feature for a reason.

[OreoCookie]

Go to <a href="http://www.macosx.org" target="_blank">MacOS X.org</a>, they have nice, easy-to-use instructions for anonymous ftp. If you want to do it.