On Feb 26, 2005, at 7:58 PM, Dan Crutcher fretted:

> I already have turned on FTP sharing and opened the correct port 
> through the firewall. I have no trouble connecting from home on my 
> Mac, but I'm not sure if PCs would also be able to upload/download 
> from this server.

There shouldn't be a problem with that.

> And I wouldn't want one client to have access to the files of another 
> client, so I need some way to set up a username/password system for 
> each client. Is this best accomplished by setting up each client as a 
> user in the Mac's Accounts preferences? Or is there some easier/better 
> way?

The easiest way is to give each client a separate account.

> I do not have Mac OS X Server? Would that make this task significantly 
> easier?

I don't see that Server would make much difference here unless there's 
a nice gui for configuring ftp access priveleges.

> Should I worry about hackers getting in through my open FTP port?

Of course you should. ftp is an old-fashioned unencrypted protocol that 
transfers passwords via cleartext. I never use it to connect to my own 
machines. I use scp or sftp instead because these are more secure.

At the very least you should consider setting up TCP wrappers by 
configuring /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny and limiting access to 
certain accounts with /etc/ftpusers.



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