Problems with running Pure-FTPd

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1

I’m on 23.05 channel now. I installed Pure-FTPd to run FTP server on my machine, because I’m kinda familiar with it.

I could not found any options for that package. I had to use overrideAttrs to add PureDB support, however I’m still not sure if it is now available, because starting Pure-FTPd via systemd service gives that in log:

pure-ftpd[151275]: (?@?) [ERROR] Unknown authentication method: puredb:/path/to/pure-ftpd.pdb

BTW package did not contain systemd service file configuration.

I ended up with pure-ftpd.nix configuration file like this:

{ pkgs, config, ... }:

{
  environment.systemPackages = [
    (pkgs.pure-ftpd.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: {
      configureFlags = oldAttrs.configureFlags ++ [ "--with-puredb" ];
    }))
  ];

  systemd.services.pure-ftpd = {
    description = "PureFTPD Server";
    wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
    serviceConfig = {
      ExecStart = "${pkgs.pure-ftpd}/bin/pure-ftpd --noanonymous --notruncate --login puredb:/path/to/pure-ftpd.pdb --prohibitdotfilesread --maxdiskusagepct 90% --bind 21 --chrooteveryone --nochmod --customerproof --dontresolve --passiveportrange 30000:30020";
      User = "ftp";
      Group = "ftp";
    };
  };

  users.extraGroups.ftp.gid = config.ids.gids.ftp;
  users.extraUsers.ftp = {
    uid = config.ids.uids.ftp;
    group = "ftp";
    description = "FTP user";
    home = "/path/to/ftp/root/";
  };

  networking.firewall.allowedTCPPortRanges = [ { from = 30000; to = 30020; } ];
}

What is more strange: I’ve created passwd and pdb files following Arch guide. Now when running:

$ pure-pw list -f /path/to/pure-ftpd.passwd

I get:

Unable to open the passwd file: No such file or directory

despite file existence and being (probably) valid password file.

Can anyone help me with setting up Pure-FTPd on NixOS?

2

Finally I have setup working Pure-FTPd instance with following configuration:

{ pkgs, config, ... }:

{
  nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs:
  {
    pure-ftpd = pkgs.pure-ftpd.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: {
        configureFlags = oldAttrs.configureFlags ++ [ "--with-puredb" ];
    });
  };

  systemd.services.pure-ftpd = {
    description = "PureFTPD Server";
    wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
    serviceConfig = {
      ExecStart = "${pkgs.pure-ftpd}/bin/pure-ftpd --noanonymous --notruncate --login puredb:/data/ftp/pure-ftpd.pdb --prohibitdotfilesread --maxdiskusagepct 90% --bind 2121 --chrooteveryone --nochmod --customerproof --dontresolve --passiveportrange 30000:30200";
    };
    environment = {
      PURE_PASSWDFILE = "/data/ftp/pure-ftpd.passwd";
      PURE_DBFILE = "/data/ftp/pure-ftpd.pdb";
    };
  };

  users.groups.ftp.gid = config.ids.gids.ftp;
  users.users.ftp = {
    uid = config.ids.uids.ftp;
    group = "ftp";
    description = "FTP user";
    home = "/data/ftp/";
  };

  networking.firewall.allowedTCPPortRanges = [ { from = 30000; to = 30200; } ];
  networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ 2121 ];
}

I have spent many hours (days?) on that, hopefully saving someone’s time :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Glad I find your code! Thank you for sharing! Have you had any updates? changes?

4

@kfiad

I was trying to use it and after a couple of hours gave up…

i get this error from the service…

(?@?) [ERROR] Unknown authentication method: puredb:/data/ftp/pure-ftpd.pdb

but pure-pw works…

image
image1196×110 10.2 KB

any ideas? thanks!

5

AFAIR this problem comes from lack of support for PureDB with default Nix Pure-FTPd package.

This the reason the following fragment:

  nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs:
  {
    pure-ftpd = pkgs.pure-ftpd.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: {
        configureFlags = oldAttrs.configureFlags ++ [ "--with-puredb" ];
    });
  };

is for.

Have you got this in your setup?

6

yes, i added this override but it doesn’t seem to really fix it

7

Right…
Well, this will look like M$ Windows way of dealing with things, but… have you tried removing Pure-FTPd from your NixOS (assuming you work on this system) configuration, rebuilding, then executing nix-store --gc and then bringing Pure-FTPd package back into the system so it will be possibly forced to be (re-)build?

8

ill give that a try… thank you … yes im on nixos

9

Sorry this is a bit off-topic but it’s common in nixpkgs for packages to not include systemd files since we use nixos modules to define systemd services and timers as you probably know.

You might consider upstreaming this to nixpkgs either as default (if it is a sane one) or as a feature flag.
Also congrats on being persistent and getting your deployment to work.

If you have the time and energy you could also write a module for pure-ftpd. The config seems relatively similar to most prometheus-exporter modules. If you end-up doing so feel free to ping me for review on github (Janik-Haag).