Proftpd Monitoring With phpftpwho

Proftpd is an excellent FTP server with many features. Wouldn't it be nice to see who is connected to your FTP server and what they are doing all in a convenient web-interface? phpftpwho allows you to see who is accessing your Proftpd FTP server all in a convenient web-interface. It is simple to install and only requires Proftpd, Apache, and PHP.

phpftpwho License

phpftpwho is licensed under the GPL.

Requirements

Apache: http://www.apache.org

Proftpd: http://www.proftpd.org

PHP: http://www.php.net

Install Apache

If you don't already have Apache installed, one command can install it under Ubuntu or Debian based systems.

sudo apt-get install apache2

This will automatically fetch and install Apache.

Install Proftpd

If you don't already have Proftpd installed, it's very simple under Ubuntu or Debian based systems.

sudo apt-get install proftpd

This will automatically fetch and install Proftpd.

Install PHP

If you don't already have PHP installed, this is also extremely easy to install under Ubuntu or Debian based systems.

sudo apt-get install php5

There are probably dependencies needed so go ahead and and hit "Y" to install PHP5 and any other required packages.

Install phpftpwho

phpftpwho must be installed on the same machine that is running Proftpd.

Download the latest version version of phpftpwho from the following webpage:

http://www.rivetcode.com/software/phpftpwho/

After downloading the .tar.gz or .zip file, extract it.

You should have a folder called phpftpwho. Copy this folder to your Apache "www" directory. This is usually in:

/var/www/

You should now have the phpftpwho folder in /var/www/phpftpwho/.

Next, open up a web-browser and navigate to:

http://yourdomain/phpftpwho/

Where yourdomain is your domain name or IP address. If you are testing this on your local system it would be localhost.

Now try making a connection to your FTP server and then refresh the phpftpwho page. You should show up on the list!

Security

If you do not want others to have access to the phpftpwho page, I would suggest protecting it with Apache Digest Authentication. Basically, this involves editing your Apache configuration file and telling Apache to password protect the phpftpwho directory. This way any access to that specific webpage will require a username and password in order to view it. Apache authentication is much too broad a topic for this tutorial but there are many guides on this website and online for setting it up.

Screenshot