Installing FTP Software

As part of the Workstation installation, the client software for FTP is already installed. You can verify that FTP-related software is installed on your system by using the RPM (Red Hat Package Manager), grep, and sort commands in this query:

 $ rpm -qa  grep ftp  sort 

The example results might differ, depending on what software packages are installed. In your Fedora file system, you will find the file /usr/bin/pftp symbolically linked to /usr/bin/ftp as well as the vsftpd server under the /usr/sbin directory. The base anonymous FTP directory structure is located under the /var/ftp directory. Other installed packages include additional text-based and graphical FTP clients.

If vsftpd is not installed, you can find it under the Add/Remove Applications dialog, under FTP Server.

NOTE

If you host an FTP server connected to the Internet, make it a habit to always check the Fedora site, http://fedora.redhat.com for up-to-date system errata, and security and bug fixes for your server software.

TIP

The Computer Emergency Response Team (http://www.cert.org) provides security advisories about current attacks and vulnerabilities on multiple platforms. Checking this site regularly for updates is a must for any site administrator. As a Fedora administrator (or user), you should also subscribe to Red Hat's announcement lists (see Appendix A, "Fedora and Linux Internet Resources").

Because the anonftp and wu-ftpd RPM packages are not included with Fedora, you must download and install them if you wish to use the wu-ftpd server. Retrieve the most recent packages for Linux from http://www.wu-ftpd.org/ to build from the latest source code, or obtain RPM packages from a reputable mirror.

Refer to Chapter 7, "Managing Software and System Resources," for information on how to use RPM packages, and Chapter 32, "C/C++ Programming Tools for Fedora," on how to build software packages from source code archives.