New Feature: Disallow FTP on Shell users
Posted (June 8th, 2007 at 5:12 pm PST) by DallasIf you have users that you only use with SSH and/or SFTP you can now disallow FTP logins altogether from our web control panel. To do this, simply go here:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=users.users&
Then edit the user you want to change, and toggle the ‘Disallow FTP?’ checkbox. Save the user and the change will go live in a few minutes.
74 Responses to “New Feature: Disallow FTP on Shell users”
Greate! Just a couple of days after I saw someone complaining about this.
It states ‘…with SSH and/or SFTP…’ but the option to ‘Disallow FTP?’ is greyed and not selectable for users who have SFTP set, only Shell users can select it. The headline reads correctly, though.
Awesome, guys. A very welcome enhancement indeed. Now is it possible to add a feature that will disallow “5 Domain Cupon [sic]” from putting a link to his referral/promo code in his comment?
Very nice, DreamHost! I still think DH is the best hosting company!
You have a major problem and I can’t even log in and open a support ticket!!!
Every email sent to me is bouncing with “undeliverable” error!
That’s cool. It would be nice if two shell/ftp users could have permission to work in a single folder.
Danny-
You mean like groups?
That is how Unix does shared permissions, by two people having the same group, and the directory being owned by a group.
This is awesome. Thanks a lot, Dreamhost!
(and also goes to show what a little kick in the rear can do for security)
My email has been down for a few hours. Our entire domain appears to be down. Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that should be listed on dreamhoststatus.com???
Anyone else having trouble connecting to the panel? (It’s not allowing me to login as any of my logins, not just one)
@why:
I was having trouble earlier, but it seems to be working for me now. From reading the forums, it seems some people have experienced some periods where they could not log in, but others could, but they seem to pass within a couple of hours.
Excellent news, thank you very much. 
why Says:
June 8th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Anyone else having trouble connecting to the panel? (It’s not allowing me to login as any of my logins, not just one)
——————————–
Delete your cookies, and try again.
Anyone else having trouble connecting to the panel?
Didn’t you used to jump all over people for posting off-topic?
My email has been down for a few hours. Our entire domain appears to be down. Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that should be listed on dreamhoststatus.com???
Not if it’s only effecting you. Did you mail support? Not having access to the panel, if it’s an issue for you, is no excuse.
This is a welcome change, though I hope that the source of the recent trouble has been rectified.
[blockquote]Didn’t you used to jump all over people for posting off-topic?[/blockquote]
Yes, James, and I still do on occasion….I guess I was just off my meds 
Thanks Dreamhost, glad to see staff are reading the responses here for good ideas.
My hosting has also been (relatively) stable recently, please (for the love of god) keep it up.
Anyone having problems in sending/receveing e-mails?
Any mail sent to my domain is bouncing back but the forward is working. Really odd. Support ticket put in.
Yes, same here.
They still have those server-wide problem ticket? I cant find it.
When I send to myself I get unknown user errors.
We are getting the unknown user error - yep. I bet some script didn’t update all the email servers or something.
All incoming mail to my users is being bounced as well. I’ve raised a ticket but have not had any reply. Fuck knows what mail I’ve lost due to this and whether or not it will be resent to my users.
Yes, same problem for all of us then.
I hope they’ll recover our e-mails - or I’ll have some pissed clients next week.
i send to my friend’s dreamhost account via gmail. It’s bounced back.
This is the Postfix program at host spunkymail-a7.g.dreamhost.com.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be
be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.
For further assistance, please send mail to
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.
The Postfix program
Yes, same error then!
No system-wide problems detected though… hummm…
Looks like it’s system wide as I’m seeing problems on spaceymail-mx3.g.dreamhost.com as well
Yes, same for me:
This is the Postfix program at host spaceymail-mx1.g.dreamhost.com.
Same here for me:
“This is the Postfix program at host spunkymail-mx7.g.dreamhost.com”
I am receiving these user unknown errors too, but not on all accounts.
Four of my websites residing on the Brandine server have been down off and on for the past 2 days. I’m unable to log into the CP to send a trouble ticket as well.
We are now unable to login to the web panel as well. Hmmm…
Panel is also offline now
And before my tickets were in error, wasnt able to send them
spunky again offline ?
Same here, Panel offline, site just about offline.
There must be some thing wrong with their internet connection and/or router.
FTP is also down for me.
I just hope they’ll recover our lost mail
All off line …
Me, too. Panel is offline, site is so slow as to be almost dead. 72% packet loss when pinging.
What’s going on now? They are down again. In the last 2 weeks I think my site has been down for 3 days or more. Anyone knows what the problem is now? I can’t get to any of my sites or dreamhost.com.
Thanks
I’m getting 75% loss while pinging here.
I’m getting a lot of loss too while pinging.
Maybe a DDOS ?
I could not find another option for submitting my problem, as of 16:55 CET I can not reach dreamhost.com nor my own domains nor the control panel.
Panel, site and FTP are so slow they’re unusable, I think my site (which is just an Under Construction-type message) took 2 mins to load.
Everything is broke if u didn’t know. FIXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I’ve been thinking. I want to be on the same server as dreamhoststatus! It’s NEVER DOWN!
FYI - My blog is down as well as email.
i think people attack their servers so much cuz they are mad at them. i almost approve of that 
Before all went down the e-mails were not coming in, so we must all check if we lost something
wow that is a good point JLP i wonder who hosts it
I think the whole point of dreamhost status is that it’s not a dreamhost server. That may be the way to go.
spaceymail is still down…
This is the Postfix program at host spaceymail-mx2.g.dreamhost.com.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be
be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.
WTF is going on today!!!
Even dreamhost.com is taking like forever to load and most of the time it times out.
I can get to the panel to report an error that outgoing mail has been bouncing for two days.
Everything related to my company’s site is down. This is probably the final straw of us moving our business elsewhere, after having mail issues almost every other week.
Ah well It’s still more than 99% available throughout the year. Basically that means it may be unavailable for 7hours a month (a month with 31 days).
Webmail delivery seems slow to me right now, but I haven’t received a bounce-back from the test messages I sent from gmail yet…
Back on the topic of disabling FTP accounts for shell users. It’s unclear to me in the control panel UI if shell users will still have SFTP access, when the “Disable FTP” box is checked.
I’ve clicked the “Disable FTP” box on my 2 shell accounts (about 30 minutes ago) but I’m waiting for that change to take affect. (I can still log in via http://ftp.) I guess I’ll learn the answer soon enough.
BTW: The FTP user I switched to SFTP a couple of days ago is behaving as expected. That’s something
as of 17:20 CET I can report everything up again: dreamhost, control panel, site and http://ftp.
My mail is also down and bouncing and I can’t get through on web panel, so I used the contact mail from the main site. I’m disappointed they haven’t posted any status here. I found out about it when a friend tried to send me some photos and got a bounce.
Loading webpages is still VERY VERY sloooowwwww. Something is still not right!
my site is down as well. would love to send a support ticket, but the panel is down as well. will just have to wait I guess?
back to normal now.
Does the “Disallow FTP” option also disable telnet? Otherwise it’s not helping much. “Disable cleartext logins” would be more appriopriate (both both FTP and telnet, but let SFTP and ssh work)
I was just looking for this yesterday. Now it’s here. DreamHost reads my dreams.
I am sure there are many people who would like to turn this off for ALL user accounts. Any chance of a blanket “Turn off FTP on all user accounts” option - it’s an appalling waste of time to go through 100+ user accounts to gain this little bit of extra obscurity that should be default anyhow 
Very much appreciated. A blanket ‘no clear text logins’ would be nice, but this is at least a good stop-gap.
Maybe this debacle will get some people off their butts to quit using them and we can finally get rid of telnet and ftp altogether sooner rather than later. They’re the rotary phones of the internet.
Thanks!
Great news about the disallowing of regular http://FTP. I’ve been waiting for that since I accidentally found out that you actually could get in with unsecured http://FTP. I immediately went in and used this new option for all shell users. Thanks!
Nice to see the ‘Unencrypted’ password field has been removed.
At last…
I’ve also noticed another security threat finally addressed: email passwords are now hidden in the panel (been asking for that since long ago).
Excellent news, thank you very much
my site is down as well. would love to send a support ticket, but the panel is down as well. will just have to wait I guess?
Nice going (and about time). THANKS! Now my boss can’t get his websites defaced