Add your system user

Yes, it is this simple, creating a new user for ftp access in vsftpd is as easy as creating a new valid linux system user.

useradd test
passwd test

Disable SSH access for FTP users

The default user creation script will give a user the /bin/bash shell, which can be a little too powerful. If you don’t want your users logging into your server via SSH, we need to know how to block this access. If you change the shell to /bin/false, the users will only be able to login via ftp or mail if you have that setup. Here is how to modify your users:

usermod -s /sbin/nologin test

Chroot a user

Alright and probably the most important part of this article is the ability to lock a user down to their own home directory so they don’t go around mucking with things they aren’t supposed to. When a user logs in they will be unable to move up a level in the directory structure.

That pretty much covers it for vsftpd, and at this point you should be able to create a new system user, set them up for vsftpd and do some basic tweaks to their access level.