SFTP to /bin/false account?

[Derek Martin]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 11:41:30AM -0500, Cole Tuininga wrote:
> 
> Does anybody know if it's possible to get sshd to handle sftp
> connections to a "shell-less" account correctly?  I'd like to let users
> upload files, but am a stickler for not giving out shell accounts unless
> absolutely necessary.  

It is NOT possible.  Both scp and sftp require the user to have a
valid shell in order to work.  The reason is because sshd uses the
shell to set up the user's environment and eventually exec either the
scp binary, or the sftp-server binary on the remote system.

The good news is, you can still get what you want.  I wrote a dummy
shell called rssh which does this for you.  It can even handle
chrooting the user to a jail, if you can set up a chroot jail
properly.  I include some documentation on how to set up a jail, but
the specifics are, well, somewhat system-specific.  :)  If you're on a
recent Red Hat system, the instructions should basically work for you.
If you're not, you'll have to make modifications as necessary.  

You can get rssh here:

  http://www.pizzashack.org/rssh/

[Though, the files are actually hosted on the sourceforge site.]

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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