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Setup sftp user

List of user’s group
# groups username

# adduser username -g sftp -s /sbin/nologin
# passwd username

in general to add a new group

# groupadd

in general to add user to a group

#usermod -G group username

Open and add the following lines to /etc/ssh/sshd_config configuration file:

list of groups and its users
#  cat /etc/group

Subsystem sftp internal-sftp
 
   Match Group sftp
   ChrootDirectory /home/%u
   ForceCommand internal-sftp
   X11Forwarding no
   AllowTcpForwarding no


# systemctl restart sshd
OR
# service sshd restart

then check the user home directory permissions
# ls /home/ -ltra
in case run this
# chmod 755 /home/username/
# chown root:sftp /home/username/ -Rf
# chown username:sftp /home/username/basedir

I had this error when I tried to create folder in basedir:
mkdir /New directory: permission denied

after googlig a lot I found this here (Thanks):
# setsebool -P ssh_chroot_rw_homedirs on
# restorecon -R /home/username
After this, sftp works as expected, even when chrooted, without having to disable SELinux completely.

——other explanation——

This tutorial will help you to create SFTP only user (without ssh access) on CentOS and RedHat systems. The user can connect the server with SFTP access only and allowed to access the specified directory. User can’t SSH into the server. Follow the below tutorial to create sftp only account.

Step 1 – Create Account

First of all, create a user account to use for sftp access. Below command will create user named sftpuser with no shell access.

sudo adduser --shell /bin/false sftpuser
sudo passwd sftpuser

Step 2 – Create Directory

Now, create the directory structure to be accessible by sftp user.

sudo mkdir -p /var/sftp/files

Change the ownership of the files directory to sftp user. So that sftpuser can read and write on this directory.

sudo chown sftpuser:sftpuser /var/sftp/files

And set the owner and group owner of the /var/sftp to root. The root user has read/write access on this access. Group member and other account have only read and execute permissions.

sudo chown root:root /var/sftp
sudo chmod 755 /var/sftp

Step 3 – Configure SSH for SFTP

Now edit the SSH configuration file in a text editor

sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and add the following settings at end of file.

Match User sftpuser
	ForceCommand internal-sftp
	PasswordAuthentication yes
	ChrootDirectory /var/sftp
	PermitTunnel no
	AllowAgentForwarding no
	AllowTcpForwarding no
	X11Forwarding no

Save the configuration and restart SSH service to apply changes.

sudo systemctl restart sshd.service

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