How to create global FTP message/banner/greeting with Pure-FTPd on Ubuntu Linux

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on April 15th 2016 - last updated on February 10th 2023 - Listed in Linux

pure-ftpd on Ubuntu (14.04 and later) doesn't use a single configuration file for the settings. Instead there is a wrapper script which reads each parameter from separate config files. This is somewhat documented. However I couldn't find any hint how to activate a global banner or login message to display when a FTP user logs in. Sure, there's the .banner file in the ftp user's home directory. The official doc says:

    ------------------------ DISPLAYING BANNERS ------------------------

If a '.banner' file is located in the 'ftp' user home directory (or in the
root directory of a virtual server, see below), it will be printed when the
client logs in. Put a nice ASCII-art logo with your name in that file.

This file shouldn't be larger than 4000 bytes, or it won't be displayed.

In each directory, you may also have a '.message' file. Its content will be
printed when a client enters the directory. Such a file can contain important
information ("Don't download version 1.7, it's broken!") .

But I want to do a general banner message for everyone and don't want to symlink a .banner every time a new FTP user is created.

There is the possibility however, to load a global banner with the -F flag. It's not called banner or message but Fortune Cookie File:

 A funny random message can be displayed in the initial login banner. The
random cookies are extracted from a text file, in the standard "fortune"
format. If you installed the "fortune" package, you should have a directory
(usually /usr/share/fortune) with binary files (xxxx.dat) and text files
(without the .dat extension) . To use Pure-FTPd cookies, just add the name
of a text file to the '-F' option. For instance:

/usr/local/sbin/pure-ftpd -F /usr/share/fortune/zippy

But how does one tell pure-ftpd to use this flag now? The answer is in the wrapper script (/usr/sbin/pure-ftpd-wrapper):

$ cat /usr/sbin/pure-ftpd-wrapper
[...]
my %conf = ('AllowAnonymousFXP' => ['-W'],
            'AllowDotFiles' => ['-z'],
[...]
            'FortunesFile' => ['-F %s', \&parse_filename],
            'FSCharset' => ['-8 %s', \&parse_string],
[...]
            );

As you can see, the wrapper script is already prepared for a separate config file called "FortunesFile". The correct file name must be used, or it won't work.

So I created this FortunesFile with the path to the file containing the actual banner message:

# echo "/etc/pure-ftpd/Banner.txt" > /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/FortunesFile

And in the banner file itself, I added the wanted general information:

$ cat /etc/pure-ftpd/Banner.txt
This FTP server is read only. And private, too.

Files older than 30 days will be automatically deleted!

********************************************

A restart of pure-ftpd confirmed that the -F flag was now being used:

# /etc/init.d/pure-ftpd restart
Restarting ftp server: Running: /usr/sbin/pure-ftpd -l puredb:/etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.pdb -l pam -A -O clf:/var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log -F /etc/pure-ftpd/Banner.txt -p 20000:20500 -u 1000 -8 UTF-8 -d -Y 1 -E -U 117:007 -B

And in an FTP client (here FileZilla), the banner message is now shown:

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