Another good HOW TO worth bookmarking – A home FTP server is useful to anyone who wants to save and retrieve files on their computer from anywhere. Ever forget a Word document on your home desktop that you really need at work? Ever download a PDF that explains how to fix something at work and you realize too late you left it at home that morning? If you have a personal FTP server, and you can reach your computer from any place on earth, your files will never be captive on your hard drive at home again. Link.
10 thoughts on “HOW TO set up a home FTP server”
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i would have expected more from makezine on a post such as this. an embedded linux on windows running the ftp, or sftp, etc. something with a bit more substance. but i do realize a majority of users out there are still on windows.
i thought it was a good resource for folks to bookmark for their windows friends…
It might be a good idea to run the ftp server on a high port instead of running it on the normal ftp port to lessen the chance that it will be easily discovered. I heard of one ISP restricting FTP, not because of security concerns, but due to the load on the server from dictionary attacks against the ftp server. Needless to say, strong passwords are a necessity on any Internet facing server.
Another fine article would be a description of a script to turn on and off the FTP remotely using a password protected cgi or via email.
As a web developer, here is what I’ve found to work best: One computer at my house has become a dedicated Linux server for both web and ftp. Using Dynamic DNS (just like your previous article described) to access the public folders of my webserver from anywhere, I can use also tools software and hardware parts like cvsWEB and Bugzilla remotely, able to handle major issues immediately. Because the computer has 80GB drive space, I wanted to utilize it more. So, I began FTPing my personal archive – photos, music, documents, etc – to a protected section of the server. Now that I have FTP setup, I just have to add the port to my routers port forwarding, and POOOF! It’s an amazing way of doing it and saves ALOT on the costs of hosted solution.
Nice post. Very informative. I wish I could post links here in order for you guys to quickly see my creation as a web developer.