3. Getting Started with SFTPPlus

3.1. Prerequisite

This page assumes you have been through the Installation section of our Documentation and have successfully initialized the default configuration.

3.2. Configuration items

Three different types of accounts are available in SFTPPlus:

  • Manager accounts - only for management operations
  • OS accounts - only for file transfer operations
  • Application accounts - only for file transfer operations

Accounts dedicated to file transfer operations have multiple Authentication Methods by which remote file transfer clients can be verified and given permission to perform file transfer operations.

3.3. Installation Adjustment

If you have installed the software correctly, and the software is running, then you should be able to log in to the Local Manager as the default administrator. The software is shipped with a default account called admin with a default password of pass.

Navigate to https://127.0.0.1:10020, enter those credentials, and you will see the local manager’s status screen similar to that below.

Local Manager Status page

Once you have logged in and can access the Local Manager, you can begin the process of customizing your instance.

3.3.1. Changing the admin credentials

To change the default admin credentials, go to ‘Administrators’. Select the account and edit both the name and password. Ensure to apply all changes.

To create a new administrator account, select ‘Add administrator’ and configure its name and password. Ensure that this account is enabled and that the default admin account is disabled as shown in the screenshot below:

PuttyGen main window

For security purposes, the default configuration has no accounts enabled for file transfer services. You can enable the sample accounts or create your own accounts.

3.4. Trying basic functionality

Once you have enabled an account and the software is running with default configuration, you can try both server-side and client-side basic functionality.

3.4.1. Server-side

You can access the HTTP Service at http://127.0.0.1:10080 using your browser or the SFTP Service at 127.0.0.1:10022 using a SFTP client such as FileZilla or WinSCP to test the server and transfer a file.

Other Server side services are available as well.

3.4.2. Client-side

To try the client-site functionality please check the Transfers documentation. You can add a new transfer using the Local Configuration Manager or the configuration file.

3.5. First Changes of Configuration

The Local Manager has a default administrator account with username admin and password pass. This account will be authenticated for logging in to the Local Manager itself, but it will not be authenticated for file transfers. As a safety measure, ensure that the default admin credentials for this account have been changed.

The default configuration provides set of authentications one of which is named deny-admin-accounts. This can be re-configured or deleted entirely based on your use case.

As a safety feature, the software ships such that one can only log in to the Local Manager locally. This can be re-configured such that you can log in remotely. For example, in the following INSTALL_ROOT/configuration/server.ini file segment, the Local Manager’s listening address is set to 203.0.113.13 and the default port of 10020:

[services/DEFAULT-MANAGER]
enabled = Yes
name = local-manager
type = manager
description = Service used for managing the server configuration.
address = 203.0.113.13
port = 10020

Warning

Depending on your architecture, this could change the service to such that the default admin/pass administrative account is facing the Internet. Care must be taken to ensure that the default administrative account is altered or deleted.

3.6. Changing the default log file configuration

To prevent creating huge log files, the default configuration creates a log file which is automatically rotated at the end of the day.

For further details on changing the log configuration, please go to the Event Handlers section.

Please take the time to alter the log file configuration option to suit your needs.