LightFTP

• Small x86-32/x64 FTP Server

System Requirements

• x86-32/x64 POSIX-compliant OS, e.g. Linux.
• x86-32/x64 Windows 7/8/8.1/10 with Cygwin (see Build section of this README).
• No admin/root privileges required. The FTP server must be allowed in the firewall.

Configuration

Stored in fftp.conf file, contains a configuration section named ftpconfig and a number of sections describing users and their privileges.

[ftpconfig]

  port

Port number to bind the server to. Default: 21

  maxusers

Maximum number of connections to the server that can be established simultaneously. Default: 1

  interface

Interface IP to bind to. Use 0.0.0.0 to listen on any available interface. Default: 127.0.0.1

  external_ip

If you are running the server behind a NAT, it is a good idea to put your real IP here. This will help clients to establish data connections. Default: 0.0.0.0

  local_mask

IP mask for local network. This will help the server to distinguish between local and Internet clients. Default: 255.255.255.0

  minport
  maxport

Port range for data connections. You can use it to configure port forwarding on your gateway device. Default: 1024..65535

  logfilepath

Full path with file name for a log file. Comment or delete it to disable logging. Default: disabled

  CATrustFile

It is recommended to leave this option as it is (/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt)

  ServerCertificate

Path to your SSL certificate. Accepted format is x509 ASCII PEM.

  Keyfile

Path to PEM private key file for your certificate.

  KeyfilePassword

Password to decrypt the private key.

  keepalive

Send keepalive packets (some NATs may require this). Default: 0 (disabled)

User Sections

Note for "accs" field:

  banned

Not allowed to log in.

  readonly

Just read directories and download files.

  upload

Create new directories, store new files. Append, rename, and delete are disabled.

  admin

All features enabled.

Note for "pswd" field: pswd=* means "any password matches".

Example of configuration file can be found in the Source directory as fftp.conf.

Build

• LightFTP comes with full source code, written in C.
• In order to build from source in Windows, you need a Cygwin environment (https://www.cygwin.com/) with GNU make, gnutls, and pthreads packages installed. Also, make sure the Cygwin bin folder is set in the system-wide PATH variable (e.g. PATH=SomeOfYourOtherValues;C:\Cygwin\bin;C:\Cygwin\usr\bin). To build the executable, run the make command in the Release directory.
• In order to build from source in Linux, you need the GCC C compiler. Run the make command in the Release directory. LightFTP uses GnuTLS, make sure you have headers (libgnutls-dev or gnutls-dev) installed.

Example for Linux Mint 19.3/Ubuntu 18.04

You need GCC and Make installed. If they are not installed, you can install them as part of the build-essential package:

  sudo apt install build-essential

LightFTP uses the GnuTLS library. It needs to be installed before compiling LightFTP. To install it, open terminal and use:

  sudo apt install gnutls-dev

or if this doesn't work, try:

  sudo apt install libgnutls28-dev  

You can download the source from https://github.com/hfiref0x/LightFTP/releases or use git.

In case you want to use git and git is not installed, install it first:

  sudo apt install git

Next, use the following:

  git clone https://github.com/hfiref0x/lightftp
  cd lightftp/Source/Release
  make

The resulting binary is fftp. Next, set up the ftp config. Example config file is Bin/fftp.conf. Set port, accounts, path to log file (optionally, if you need it), path to certificates if you want to use them, etc.

Old Windows Version

Since 2.2, the old unmaintained Windows version has been moved to a separate archive repository: https://github.com/hfiref0x/LightFTP_win.

Changelog

Changelog available at Bin/changelog.txt.

Authors

(c) 2007 - 2025 LightFTP Project