Comments on: HOW-TO: SFTP on Plesk 7.5 Reloaded for Linux

By: andrewbuckman

andrewbuckman — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 18:53:19 +0000

Follow all the steps above to get scponly installed (note I'm sure the version has changed since I wrote that). The very last line in my instructions tells you how to manually assign the scponly shell to a user. There is no GUI for assigning a shell to a subdomain or web user, thus you will have to do it manually using that command line.

If you ever edit that user in the control panel (even a password change), there's a good chance that Plesk will change the shell on you and you'll have to re-assign the scponly shell using that command.

Please note I haven't tried this myself, so be sure to verify it's working as you intend.

By: Sthn

Sthn — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:19:52 +0000

I'm having the same problem, how would i "grant the proper access per account manually yourself" in plesk 8.2.0 hosted by network solutions? Could you explain it for me?

Thank you.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:59:18 +0000

I’m afraid Plesk doesn’t support what you’re trying to do through the control panel at all. They only let you grant access to a shell for the main user of the site. You’d need to grant the proper access per account manually yourself, and you’re really going to want something that is chrooted if you go this route. You could easily grant a lot more access than you intend, so tread carefully. Also be warned that changes like that could very well could get overwritten by Plesk when you make other changes in the control panel.

By: Krishnan Nandabalan

Krishnan Nandabalan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:23:03 +0000

Hi,

I have set up a domain in plesk and no problem getting access to the main directory by SFTP or FTP. But I cannot seem to get access to directories in subdomains or as a Webuser by SFTP (it works in FTP). The version of Plesk I am using is 8.2.0 (hosted by Network Solutions). I need to be able to give protected BUT limited access to certain directories to certain users.Any help in solvig thisis greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:10:33 +0000

That is the plan Tom. The idea is to use it for accounts that you want to allow SFTP access for without allowing shell access. If you want shell access on the account you can pick any of the default drop-downs based on the shell you want to enable.

By: Tom Coady

Tom Coady — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:16:37 +0000

This works perfectly if the plan is to lock yourself out: after trying the above all I get is WinSCP: this is end-of-file:0
when I try ssh to my account

By: » Tutorial: Managing a Godaddy virtual dedicated server (VDS) - Shig Odani Online Marketing Blog

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 21:50:00 +0000

[...] I’ve been using standard FTP for a while now, but recently I learned about the merit of using secure FTP or SFTP. When transferring files using standard FTP, the data (including login information) gets transmitted in plain text, so someone can conceivably intercept it and read it. If you use SFTP, the data gets encrypted so even if it’s intercepted when you’re sending it to your server, it won’t be readable. Getting started with this is pretty easy. When you’re logged into Plesk, navigate to the domain administration for the domain you’d like to do this for (this should really be done for every domain you use). Then go to ‘Setup.’ Under Preferences, you will see a dropdown menu for Shell access. For this, I just selected /bin/sh. Click OK and you’re done on the server end. Next, for whatever FTP client you use, for servertype, select SFTP. Your FTP client should now be able to connect to the server as SFTP and transmit data securely. There is also a way to setup SFTP without giving away Shell access. Read about it at TheOneAndTheOnly.com. [...]

By: Allen

Allen — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:11:12 +0000

This is a cool trick but I can’t use it without the accounts being properly jailed. Looking forward to any update you may have a chance to give, to complete this!

Thanks in advance

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 19:29:34 +0000

I’m not sure what I was doing back in May, /usr/local/bin/scponly is the shell you really want to be using. My original posting said /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server which actually worked and probably didn’t need scponly compiled or installed, scponly should be more secure. The non-jailed issue remains, I should have compiled scponly with the chroot features enabled, I’ll probably run through that and make another post later about that.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 03:48:01 +0000

Guess I should have proofread that better, thanks for pointing that out. You are correct, sftp-server is a binary file, it’s the actual shell you want to use. The original post has been corrected.