21.2.2.2. Starting Multiple Copies of vsftpd

Sometimes, one computer is used to serve multiple FTP domains. This is a technique called multihoming. One way to multihome using vsftpd is by running multiple copies of the daemon, each with its own configuration file.
To do this, first assign all relevant IP addresses to network devices or alias network devices on the system. For more information about configuring network devices, device aliases, see Chapter 10, NetworkManager. For additional information about network configuration scripts, see Chapter 11, Network Interfaces.
Next, the DNS server for the FTP domains must be configured to reference the correct machine. For information about BIND, the DNS protocol implementation used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and its configuration files, see Section 17.2, “BIND”.
For vsftpd to answer requests on different IP addresses, multiple copies of the daemon must be running. In order to make this possible, a separate vsftpd configuration file for each required instance of the FTP server must be created and placed in the /etc/vsftpd/ directory. Note that each of these configuration files must have a unique name (such as /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd-site-2.conf) and must be readable and writable only by the root user.
Within each configuration file for each FTP server listening on an IPv4 network, the following directive must be unique: 
listen_address=N.N.N.N
Replace N.N.N.N with a unique IP address for the FTP site being served. If the site is using IPv6, use the listen_address6 directive instead.
Once there are multiple configuration files present in the /etc/vsftpd/ directory, all configured instances of the vsftpd daemon can be started by executing the following command as root: 
~]# service vsftpd start
See Section 21.2.2.1, “Starting and Stopping vsftpd” for a description of other available service commands.
Individual instances of the vsftpd daemon can be launched from a root shell prompt using the following command: 
~]# vsftpd /etc/vsftpd/configuration-file
In the above command, replace configuration-file with the unique name of the requested server's configuration file, such as vsftpd-site-2.conf.
Other directives to consider altering on a per-server basis are:
  • anon_root
  • local_root
  • vsftpd_log_file
  • xferlog_file
For a detailed list of directives that can be used in the configuration file of the vsftpd daemon, see Section 21.2.2.5, “Files Installed with vsftpd”.