Setting up a SFTP Server on Windows

SFTP stands for Secure File Transfer Protocol. Unlike FTP, SFTP transfers files securely by using SSH. Unix based machines are come with SSH preinstalled, But in Windows you need to install OpenSSH for this.It is an open source program. Once  downloaded OpenSSH, run the setup file and make sure to install both server and client component.

Configure SSH Server

1. At first you need to create a group and passwd file, Open command prompt then move to c:\program files\openssh\bin directory

Creating group file,

2. From bin shell type mkgroup -l >> ..\etc\group

Creating Passwd file

3.From bin shell type mkpasswd -l -u username >> ..\etc\passwd, “username” must be an existing windows user

Creating home directory for user

4. Default user home directory is “c:\document and settings\ username”. for changing the home directory there is two steps

a. Go to registry editor and move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cygnus Solutions\Cygwin\mounts v2\ /home , Open “NATIVE” key and change to new directory path.(Eg: c:\test)

b. Open C:\Program Files\OpenSSH\etc\passwd in notepad and change the entry /home/<username> to /home/

Client Side

To connect SFTP server ,you will need to install FTP client that supports SFTP. You can use an open source FTP client FileZilla, In FileZilla create a new connection, select the connection type as SFTP using SSH and select the normal user. “22 “is the communication port.

Connection setup for accessing SFTP using FileZilla