OpenSSH is a widely used open-source tool that provides secure network communication services between two systems. It provides various services including SSH, SCP, and SFTP which are widely used for secure data transfer. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install OpenSSH SFTP server on Alpine Linux.
We will first update the package repository to ensure that we get the latest security patches and updates.
sudo apk update
We can now proceed to install the OpenSSH SFTP server on Alpine Linux via the following command.
sudo apk add openssh-server
After installation, we need to configure the OpenSSH server to allow SFTP access. We will edit the configuration file located at /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Add the following lines at the end of the configuration file.
Subsystem sftp internal-sftp
Match Group sftp
ChrootDirectory %h
ForceCommand internal-sftp
AllowTcpForwarding no
Save and close the configuration file.
To create an SFTP user, we first need to create a group for SFTP users with the following command,
sudo addgroup sftp
We will now create a user, add it to the newly-created group, and set a password for the user.
sudo adduser sftpuser -G sftp -s /sbin/nologin -D -H
sudo passwd sftpuser
After completing the configuration and user setup, we need to restart the OpenSSH server using the following command:
sudo /etc/init.d/sshd restart
We are now ready to connect to the SFTP server. We will use the SFTP command to connect and add files.
sftp sftpuser@localhost
On successful connection, you will be prompted to enter the user’s password. Once connected, the local machine’s command prompt will change to the sftp command prompt. You can now add files to the remote directory by using the put command.
put localfile /remote/directory/
In this tutorial, we learned how to install and configure the OpenSSH SFTP server on Alpine Linux. We also created SFTP users and connected to the server via SFTP.
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