unFTP

When you need to FTP, but don't want to.

Website | Docs | **libunftp **

unFTP is an FTP(S) server written in Rust and built on top of libunftp and the Tokio asynchronous run-time. It is un like your normal FTP server in that it provides:

• Configurable Authentication (e.g. Anonymous, PAM, a JSON file or HTTP).
• Configurable storage back-ends (e.g. GCS or filesystem)
• Configurable notifications (e.g. events over Google Pub/Sub)
• An HTTP server with health endpoints for use for example in Kubernetes for readiness and liveness probes.
• Integration with Prometheus for monitoring.
• A proxy protocol mode for use behind proxies like HA Proxy and Nginx.
• Structured logging and the ability to ship logs to Google Cloud Logging or a Redis instance.

With unFTP, you can present RFC compliant FTP(S) to the outside world while freeing yourself to use modern APIs and techniques on the inside of your perimeter.

Installation and Usage

User documentation are available on our website unftp.rs

Provided Docker Images

The project contains templated Dockerfiles . To get a list of available commands to create them, run:

make help

We offer 3 different options for building an unFTP docker image:

• scratch: builds the binary in rust:slim and deploys in a FROM scratch image. The unFTP binary is statically linked using musl libc.
• alpine (default): builds in rust:slim and deploy in alpine. This image is built with musl instead of a full-blown libc. The unFTP binary is statically linked using musl libc.
• alpine-debug: same images as alpine but using the debug build of unftp and adds tools like lftp and CurlFtpFS while also running as root.

To build the alpine docker image:

make docker-image-alpine

Alternatively you can download pre-made images from docker hub.

Enabling tokio-console

You can use tokio-console to analyze async tasks running in unFTP. To do this you need to compile a build or run with the tokio_console feature enabled while also enabling the tokio_unstable cfg.

For example:

RUSTFLAGS="--cfg tokio_unstable" cargo build --features tokio_console

or:

RUSTFLAGS="--cfg tokio_unstable" cargo run --features tokio_console -- -vv --auth-type=anonymous

unFTP will listen on default port 6669 for connections from tokio-console.

Selective compiling

The unFTP Cargo.toml file lists features that allows enabling or disabling storage and authentication back-ends.

These are the default ones: "auth_rest", "sbe_gcs", "auth_jsonfile", "sbe_opendal".

The binary called unftp_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu that we provide via the unFTP GitHub releases also enables auth_pam.

📦 Storage Back-end Extensions

Feature	Description
sbe_azblob	Enables Azure Blob Storage support via unftp-sbe-opendal.
sbe_gcs	Enables Google Cloud Storage support via unftp-sbe-gcs.
sbe_iso	Enables serving ISO 9660 images as FTP storage backends via unftp-sbe-iso.
sbe_opendal	Enables generic cloud storage support using unftp-sbe-opendal.

🔐 Auth Back-end Extensions

Feature	Description
auth_jsonfile	Enables authentication from a local JSON file via unftp-auth-jsonfile.
auth_pam	Enables authentication via PAM using unftp-auth-pam.
auth_rest	Enables REST-based authentication using unftp-auth-rest.

Getting help and staying informed

Support is given on a best effort basis. You are welcome to engage us on the discussions page or create a Github issue.

You can also follow news and talk to us on Telegram

Updating user documentation

Make your edits in docs/

If you want to preview the docs:

• Install Doctave as explained in the README at https://github.com/Doctave/doctave
• Run make site-preview

License

You're free to use, modify and distribute this software under the terms of the Apache-2.0 license.

See also

• libunftp, the primary crate unFTP server is based on.
• libunftp back-ends/extensions on crates.io