How to enable passive FTP

If you are running a FTP server (Pureftp/Proftp) with a CSF firewall (very important in a VPS or virtuozzo), it is necessary to enable passive mode, because this mode works best for ftp clients protected by firewall since the client initiates the connections. If you don’t enable passive mode in VPS, you might encounter problems like unresponsive ftp server or hang or it will not list the directories after FTP connection.

Here are the steps to enable passive FTP.

Login to your server using a SSH client

Open the Pure-FTPd configuration file in your favorite editor

# vi  /etc/pure-ftpd.conf

Uncomment the line that starts with PassivePortRange and add:

PassivePortRange  30000  35000

Restart Pure-FTPd with the command,

# service pure-ftpd restart

If you use a firewall don’t forget to allow inbound connections on the newly added ports.

This can be done by editing CSF firewall,

# vi /etc/csf/csf.conf

and add th ports as below.

# Allow incoming TCP ports
TCP_IN = “20,21,22,25,53,80,110,30000:35000?

and then,

# service csf restart

OR

# csf -r

# service pureftpd restart

Same steps can be followed for proftp as well, in proftpd.conf, you will have to edit the option “PassivePorts”.

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