[colug-432] SFTP

[Rick Hornsby]

> On May 13, 2015, at 09:15, Steve VanSlyck <s.vanslyck at postpro.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi.
>  
> I can log in to my CentOS 6.5 x63 VPS running on DigitalOcean just fine with SSH but attempting to access via SFTP results in an error, "No supported authentication methods available," after presenting my username.
>  
> I installed sftp thusly:
>  
>  sudo yum -y install vsftpd
>  
>  sudo yum -y install ftp

I think you're confusing SFTP and FTPS.  They're not the same, but often mixed up or thought to be the same thing.

Your ssh server comes bundled with an SFTP server that you may need to enable in /etc/ssh/sshd_config -

	Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/exec/openssh/sftp-server

sftp operates over port 22, the same as ssh.  It uses ssh to secure the connection.

ftps is ftp over SSL.  This is analogous to http over SSL, which gives you https.  According to /etc/services, ftps uses ports 989 and 990 but sometimes will be set up to use port 21 (the standard FTP port).

Given a choice, stick with sftp unless you have a compelling reason for using ftps.

It is very confusing, but "vsftpd" is not sftp.  It is ftps - the underlying protocol is ftp.  The "vs" prefix is unfortunately confusing.


Either way, if you're getting to the point of No supported auth methods, your problem is extremely unlikely to be your iptables firewall.



>  
>  sudo nano /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf
> Set <code>anonymous_enable=NO</code>
> Set <code>local_enable=YES</code>
> Set <code>chroot_local_user=YES</code>
>  
>  sudo service vsftpd restart
>  
>  chkconfig vsftpd on
>  
> iptables is running but based on the above I assumed it was not the culprit. Given the known murphy backend to the ass-u-me API that comes standard with all human wetware, I stopped the iptables service an tried to sftp again, with the same result. So I restarted iptables (the entire server for that matter) and wrote this email.
>  
> Ideas anyone?
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