Create users accounts on SFTP server by code

Question

I have the following requirement: in an existing webapplication we have a user management. In this you should be able to say for user xyz he should have access to an SFTP-Server lets say with a checkbox option: Allow access to SFTP.

If the option gets selected it should do the following thing:

-> Create a login on the SFTP-Server User: xyz Passwort xzy
-> Create a folder for user /root/xyz with read and write permission (isolated from others)

Anyone has done something similar or an idea how to archive this? What I found so far is .NET FTP authentication which works with IIS (but seems IIS supports only FTP/S not SFTP).

The SFTP is not set up by now, so could be any (prefered on another server)

Would appreciate any help :)

Answer 1

Seems like what you need is an SFTP (thus SSH) server that allows you to create users via some sort of command-line or - better - via remote calls. Depending on the server there may be several ways to do that.

• if the server allows you to have SSH shell access (which I would strongly discourage!!) then you could open a shell and on it and use your OS/server command line tools to create/manage user profiles there
• if the server has its own CLI (command-line interface) and such CLI allows for remote configuration, then you could invoke it from your web application (make sure permissions allow you to do so) and do it that way
• the best way to do it, though, would be to have a server that can be configured via REST API, so you could simply call such REST API from within the context of your web application, and manage your SFTP server's users that way

Since you have not deployed your SFTP server yet, and if you have the liberty to pick any SFTP server you see fit, then you may want to try Syncplify.me Server!, which gives you all 3 options listed above.

(disclaimer: I work at Syncplify)