How to Restrict a User's Access Using SFTP?

[Mark Phillips]

Eric,

The Debian equivalent to /sbin/nologin appears to be /bin/false. When I
tried that, I could not sftp or ssh or gain access to the machine in
anyway. I am not sure if there is another Debian shell that allows sftp but
not ssh.

Thanks!

Mark

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 9:54 PM, Eric Shubert <ejs at shubes.net> wrote:

> That should be ok.
>
> Be sure you have your ftp server configured such that they cannot access
> folders above/across their home folder. File permissions may handle this,
> but probably will not (many things are world readable).
>
> Also, be sure that they cannot login to a command prompt by setting their
> login shell to /sbin/nologin (might vary with distro). This is commonly
> done for service accounts (apache, etc).
>
>
> On 12/28/2011 03:38 PM, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
>> Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. Based on some constraints,
>> your advice, some googling, I arrived at this set-up, but I am not sure
>> how secure it is.
>>
>> 1. The web creation software (iWeb on a Mac) only supports ftp and sftp
>> to upload a site.
>> 2. iWeb does not support the use of "versions" for the web pages. By
>> that I mean iWeb is strictly one way - create a site and publish it. It
>> cannot import an iWeb site, it has to start at the beginning. One can
>> create a site and publish it, then edit the site, and publish again, but
>> it cannot import or use a previous version of the site as a starting
>> point. (I mention this because Eric suggested using git, which sounded
>> like a great idea, but alas
>>
>> I have this setup, but I could use some advice on how to make it more
>> secure....
>>
>> 1. User account fred
>> 2. fred's home is /var/www/domain/fred
>> 3. /var/www/domain/fred has owner:group fred:fred
>> 4. Document root is /var/www/domain/fred
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Eric Shubert <ejs at shubes.net
>> <mailto:ejs at shubes.net>> wrote:
>>
>>    On 12/27/2011 10:46 PM, Mark Phillips wrote:
>>
>>        I need to give a user access to my web server via sftp to upload
>> web
>>        site changes. What is the best way to do this? I have several other
>>        sites on the same server, so I want to prevent them or anyone
>>        else who
>>        gains access to their account from being able to make changes to
>>        those
>>        sites or other parts of the server.
>>
>>        Thanks,
>>
>>        Mark
>>
>>
>>    I use vsftp, which can be configured to allow users access only to
>>    their web site's tree. sftp might be able to do the same.
>>
>>    Then, create their user such that their home directory is their web
>>    site's directory, and they cannot log in to the system (only vsftp)
>>    with an /etc/passwd entry like this:
>>    vsftpuser:x:511:511::/var/__**vhosts/domain.com/docs:/sbin/_**_nologin<http://domain.com/docs:/sbin/__nologin>
>>    <http://domain.com/docs:/sbin/**nologin<http://domain.com/docs:/sbin/nologin>
>> >
>>
>>
>>    Files in their web site are owned by their user, with read
>>    permissions for 'other' (o+r), which allows apache (or nginx) to
>>    read them.
>>
>>    --
>>    -Eric 'shubes'
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
> --
> -Eric 'shubes'
>
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