S2 Studios » 12) FTP Server

12) FTP Server

Now that you have your Apache server up and running, we’re going to set up the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server so that you can transfer files to and from your server.

Launch Server Admin and select your server under Computers & Services. Log in as admin if necessary.
Select FTP and click on the Settings tab on the bottom. Here, you’ll provide general settings for your FTP server.
You can leave the Disconnect client after 3 login failures as is.
Provide an email address for the FTP admin if you’d like.
For authentication, leave it on Any Method.
Depending on your bandwidth and resources, you can cap the number of maximum connections. This number would also depend on how many people has accounts with access to the FTP server.
Check Enable anonymous access if that suits your purposes. If not, keep it off.
MacBinary and disk image conversion is enabled by default. You can leave that as is, but I disabled it on my server since the server tries to mount disk images automatically once the file transfer is complete, which is a burden on the server.

FTP Panel 1

Click on the Advanced Tab. Here you can choose which directory an authenticated user starts off in once he connects to the FTP server.
For this example, I set the FTP root as /Library/Webserver/Documents to allow quick access to the root directory of the web server along with my home directory for convenience.
Press the Start Service button to start your FTP server.

FTP Panel 2

Now that FTP is up and running, launch an FTP client of your choice. I personally use Panic Software’s Transmit.

Test out your FTP server both locally and over the internet. Remember to allow FTP traffic through your router and firewall and that it’s properly forwarded to your server, otherwise you won’t be able to connect. The standard port for FTP is 21 via TCP.

FTP Client Screen