Access ftp server from Google Cloud Engine VM

Question

I have created a LAMP Bitnami VM on Google Cloud Platform Compute Engine.

vsftpd is installed already and I have edited the options to include:

listen=YES
listen_address=0.0.0.0
write_enable=YES
local_enable=YES
anonymous_enable=NO
local_umask=022
userlist_enable=YES
userlist_deny=NO
userlist_file=/etc/vsftpd.allowed_users

I have the PHP server up and running on http://my-ip-address but when I try to navigate to ftp://my-ip-address the browser just hangs.

I haven't used ftp for about 100 years so I'm not sure if I'm going about this the right way.

Do I need to do something with the firewall? I tried to do that but GCP wouldn't accept ftp as a protocol.

I've also tried with Filezilla but I get 'connection timed out'.

What am I missing please?

Answer 1

Make sure you have GCP firewall rule (ingress) in place to allow tcp:21 for FTP traffic to reach to the instance.

You can install tcpdump package on the server to monitor the traffic for verification.

To monitor the traffic on port 21 (ftp) can use the following syntax:

sudo tcpdump -i interface port 21

Example: sudo tcpdump -i eth0 port 21

I verified this on the GCE LAMP Bitnami VM with vsftpd package installed and was able to ftp from browser.

Moreover, FTP is an insecure protocol. You can set-up SFTP for more security and encrypted traffic.

Answer 2

Yes you missing Google Cloud Firewall, You have open some ports to make a successful connection with your ftp server. Go and visit this Set up an FTP Server on Google Cloud Platform -siteyaar.com blog post, This will help you.

First add this line in vsftpd.conf file.

pasv_min_port=40000
pasv_max_port=50000

After that open this ports 20,21,990,40000-50000 from Google cloud Firewall.