How To Allow SFTP Without Shell Access on Ubuntu/CentOS/RHEL Linux

Creating a New User

First, create a new user who will be granted only file transfer access to the server. Here, we're using the username Peter, but you can use any username you like.

sudo adduser peter            #If you are on Ubuntu

You'll be prompted to create a password for the account, followed by some information about the user. The user information is optional, so you can press ENTER to leave those fields blank.

useradd peter                 #If you are on CentOS/RHEL

passwd peter                  #Set Password for user peter

You have now created a new user that will be granted access to the restricted directory. In the next step we will create the directory for file transfers and set up the necessary permissions.

Creating a Directory for File Transfers

In order to restrict SFTP access to one directory, we first have to make sure the directory complies with the SSH server's permissions requirements, which are very particular.

Specifically, the directory itself and all directories above it in the filesystem tree must be owned by root and not writable by anyone else. Consequently, it's not possible to simply give restricted access to a user's home directory because home directories are owned by the user, not root.

Note: Some versions of OpenSSH do not have such strict requirements for the directory structure and ownership, but most modern Linux distributions (including Ubuntu 16.04) do.



First, create the directories.

sudo mkdir -p /var/sftp/uploads 

Set the owner of /var/sftp to root.

sudo chown root:root /var/sftp 

Give root write permissions to the same directory, and give other users only read and execute rights.

sudo chmod 755 /var/sftp 

Change the ownership on the uploads directory to peter.

sudo chown peter:peter/var/sftp/uploads 

Now that the directory structure is in place, we can configure the SSH server itself.

Restricting Access to One Directory

In this step, we'll modify the SSH server configuration to disallow terminal access for peter but allow file transfer access.

Open the SSH server configuration file using nano or your favorite text editor.

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config 

Scroll to the very bottom of the file and append the following configuration snippet:

. . .

Match User peter
ForceCommand internal-sftp
PasswordAuthentication yes
ChrootDirectory /var/sftp
PermitTunnel no
AllowAgentForwarding no
AllowTcpForwarding no
X11Forwarding no

Then save and close the file.

Here's what each of those directives do:

• Match User tells the SSH server to apply the following commands only to the user specified. Here, we specify peter.
• ForceCommand internal-sftp forces the SSH server to run the SFTP server upon login, disallowing shell access.
• PasswordAuthentication yes allows password authentication for this user.
• ChrootDirectory /var/sftp/ ensures that the user will not be allowed access to anything beyond the /var/sftp directory.
• AllowAgentForwarding no, AllowTcpForwarding no. and X11Forwarding no disables port forwarding, tunneling and X11 forwarding for this user.

This set of commands, starting with Match User, can be copied and repeated for different users too. Make sure to modify the username in the Match User line accordingly.

Note: You can omit the PasswordAuthentication yes line and instead set up SSH key access for increased security.

To apply the configuration changes, restart the service.

sudo systemctl restart sshd 

You have now configured the SSH server to restrict access to file transfer only for peter. The last step is testing the configuration to make sure it works as intended.

Verifying the Configuration

Let's ensure that our new peter user can only transfer files.

Logging in to the server as peter using normal shell access should no longer be possible. Let's try it:

ssh peter@localhost 

You'll see the following message before being returned to your original prompt:

Error message

This service allows sftp connections only.
Connection to localhost closed.

This means that peter can no longer can access the server shell using SSH.

Next, let's verify if the user can successfully access SFTP for file transfer.

sftp peter@localhost 

Instead of an error message, this command will show a successful login message with an interactive prompt.

SFTP prompt

Connected to localhost.
sftp>

You can list the directory contents using ls in the prompt:

sftp> ls 

This will show the uploads directory that was created in the previous step and return you to the sftp> prompt.

SFTP file list output

uploads

To verify that the user is indeed restricted to this directory and cannot access any directory above it, you can try changing the directory to the one above it.

sftp> cd .. 

Conclusion