How to simplify the managing of users groups and shares in SFTPGo

Jack Wallen walks you through the process of simplifying the SFTPGo workflow.

Recently, I posted a tutorial on deploying SFTPGo. During my work with this platform, I discovered that if you decide to venture beyond the realm of the default virtual folders, things get a bit complicated and you have to not only add users and groups to SFTPGo but also to the Linux system. This doubles the amount of work you have to do, and if you’re dealing with a lot of users, this can get problematic.

I you opt to keep your users within their virtual folders, this isn’t a problem. But for my purposes, I need to be able to share folders outside of /srv/sftpgo.

If you don’t want to have to jump through the same hoops I did, I have a quick fix for you. Let me show you how it’s done.

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What you’ll need

To make this change, you’ll need a running instance of SFTPGo and SSH access to the hosting service using an account with sudo privileges. That’s it: Let’s make some magic.

How to make this change

By default, SFTPGo runs as a dedicated user. This is done for added security so the service can only write to locations to which the controlling user has access.

If we circumvent this default configuration, are we opening ourselves up to problems? Of course. So if you don’t trust your network, you might think twice about doing this. But if you need simplicity and have a reliable security team that has worked hard to lock down your network, this change will make your life a bit easier.

To make this change, what we’re going to do is reconfigure the SFTPGo systemd service to run as the root user instead of the sftpgo user. To make this change, we’re going to use the systemctl edit tool to edit the file. For that, log into your hosting server via SSH and issue the command:

sudo systemctl edit sftpgo.service

In that file, add the following lines:

[Service]
User=root
Group=root

Save and close the file.

Restart the SFTPGo service with the command:

sudo systemctl restart sftpgo

At this point, SFTPGo is running as the root user and you should no longer have to jump through all of the hoops I did to get it working otherwise.

I will say this, however: Even starting the SFTPGo service as the root user doesn’t make it possible for end-users to connect to your SFTPGo deployment with their file managers, from the command line or even a GUI tool like FileZilla. The only way this can effectively work is via the SFTPGo web interface.

The lesson here is the best way to use SFTPGo is the suggested method and have your users work within the SFTPGo web UI. If you go that route, you’ll find SFTPGo to be a great little SFTP server for your company.

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