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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T12:31:49+00:00

I have been tasked with setting up a centOS 6.2 development box (even though

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I have been tasked with setting up a centOS 6.2 development box (even though I do not know linux) and am currently using vsftpd to FTP into a box at work. The problem is sftp is not working.

Authentication failed. Error: Critical error Error: Could not connect
to server

this is the error I am getting.

I have added the user by doing the following:

sudo useradd -d /var/www/PATH -s /usr/sbin/nologin USERNAME
sudo passwd USERNAME

sudo chown -R USERNAME /var/www/ PATH 
sudo chmod 755 /var/www/PATH

it works for ftp (and the folder structure is jailed) but it does not work with sftp.

However, when I add a user the following way:

sudo useradd USERNAME
sudo passwd USERNAME
sudo chown –R USERNAME /opt/USERNAME
sudo chmod 777 /opt/USERNAME

I have sftp access unjailed and no FTP access.

It does not matter if I have to create multiple accounts (one for ftp and one for sftp), they do have to be jailed to the directory.

If there is a better solution to my problem, help would be welcomed!

Thanks,

Matt

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You are on good way.

    Personally I am using chrooting of sftp user described here: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2012/03/chroot-sftp-setup/

    IMHO in article is not stressed out enough that user’s home directory has to be owned by root 

        # ls -ld /var/www/PATH
    drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 28 23:49 /var/www/PATH

    You can get a lot of helpful info from logs, it this case you can search

        tail -f /var/log/secure

    while connecting from external host.

    Let me know if you have any more help with this problem.

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