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Is there a way for people to log onto a debian server via sftp using just mysql database table as authentaction. IE not adding a user to the system?

I know it can be done over ftp and TLS but i really dont want to use that method

Thanks

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2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

My two cent suggestion: you could use PAM to do this.

E.g. Use some pam module as pam-mysql to store some of your users in mysql and pam_require to avoid that mysql-stored users can access other than sftp service.

Start looking here: Modules/Applications available or in progress...

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thats is a very useful link thanks very much, Ill mark this answered as its what im looking for. Cheers – shutupsquare May 12 '11 at 15:17
Wouldn't you still need to have a UID assigned to each user in this case? i.e. you're adding users anyway; it's just that the UID/password/etc. for some of them are stored in MySQL. I suppose you could use a single UID for all of them, but then they could read and overwrite each other's files. – Jander May 13 '11 at 6:45
@Jander, if users own files in the file system, they must have user ids. We are talking of user authentication, not of user authorization. If you want to avoid user ids, you'll have to write you own "file system" authorization mechanism. – andcoz May 23 '11 at 22:21
up vote 2 down vote

No. SFTP works by logging in via SSH and then spawning the sftpd subprocess on the remote end.

You can, however, create a user that cannot log on except for sftp/scp by giving them the scponly program as a login shell. Fairly easy to do as long as you follow the steps, and about as secure as it gets.

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