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Using OpenSSH to setup an SFTP server on Ubuntu 14.04

I'm busy migrating an existing server to the cloud and need to replicate the SFTP setup.  They're using a password to authenticate a user and then uploading data files for a web service to consume.

YMMV - My use case is pretty specific to this legacy application so you'll need to give consideration to the directories you use.

It took a surprising amount of reading to find a consistent set of instructions so I thought I should document the setup from start to finish.

Firstly, I set up the group and user that I will be needing:

 groupadd sftponly  
 useradd -G sftponly username  
 passwd username

Then I made a backup copy of and then edited /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Right at the end of the file add the following:

  Match group sftponly   
    ChrootDirectory /usr/share/nginx/html/website_directory/chroot   
    X11Forwarding no   
    AllowTcpForwarding no   
    ForceCommand internal-sftp -d /uploads

For some reason if this block appears before the UsePAM setting then your sshd_config is borked and you won't be able to connect to port 22.

We force the user into the /uploads directory by default when they login using the ForceCommand setting.

Now change the Subsystem setting.  I've left the original as a comment in here.  The parameter "-u 0002" sets the default umask for the user.

 #Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server  
 Subsystem sftp internal-sftp -u 0002

I elected to place the base chroot folder inside the website directory for a few reasons.  Firstly, this is the only website or service running on this VM so it doesn't need to play nicely with other use cases.  Secondly I want the next sysadmin who is trying to work out how this all works to be able to immediately spot what is happening when she looks in the directory.

Then because my use case demanded it I enabled password logins for the sftp user by finding and changing the line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config like this:

 # Change to no to disable tunnelled clear text passwords  
 PasswordAuthentication yes

The base chroot directory must be owned by root and not be writeable by any other groups.

cd /usr/share/nginx/html/website_directory
mkdir chroot
chown root:root chroot/  
chmod 755 chroot/

If you skip this step then your connection will be dropped with a "broken pipe" message as soon as you connect.  Looking in your /var/log/auth.log file will reveal errors like this: fatal: bad ownership or modes for chroot directory

The next step is to make a directory that the user has write privileges to.  The base chroot folder is not writeable by your sftp user, so make an uploads directory and give them "writes" (ha!) to it:

 mkdir uploads  
 chown username:username uploads  
 chmod 755 uploads

If you skip that step then when you connect you won't have any write privileges.  This is why we had to create a chroot base directory and then place the uploads folder off it.  I chose to stick the base in the web directory to make it obvious to spot, but obviously in more general cases you would place this in more sensible locations.

Finally I link the uploads directory in the chroot jail to the uploads directory where the web service expects to find files.

 cd /usr/share/nginx/html/website_directory  
 ln -s chroot/uploads uploads

I feel a bit uneasy about a password login being used to write files to a directory being used by a webservice, but in my particular use case my firewall whitelists our office IP address on port 22.  So nobody outside of our office can connect.  I'm also using fail2ban just in case somebody manages to get access to our VPN.
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