Pydio v8

[Ent] SFTP Access

WARNING This documentation is for Cells v3. Looking for Pydio Cells v4 docs?

Starting at version 2.2, Cells Enterprise provides a SFTP gateway that exposes user workspaces through the SFTP protocol. This page describes the steps required to configure and enable the gateway.

Creating server SSH keys

The first step is to create the server private key. Most common way is to use openSSL tool ssh-keygen to generate a keypair:

$> ssh-keygen -t rsa -f id_rsa

This generates two files inside the current folder: private key id_rsa and public key id_rsa.pub. The path to the private key file is required for the next step.

Enabling SFTP Gateway

SFTP Gateway must be enabled manually by editing the configuration file $CELLS_WORKING_DIR/pydio.json.

In the "services" section, add a JSON section for pydio.gateway.sftp

{
  "services": {
    [...]
    "pydio.gateway.sftp": {
      "enabled": true,        
      "hostKeyFile": "/path/to/id_rsa",
      "port": 2022,
      "tmpDir": "/path/to/custom/temp/directory",
      "tmpFilesLifespan": "15m"
    }
  }
}

Configuration values are described below.

Name Type Mandatory Default Description
enabled boolean true false Start sFTP Gateway
hostKeyFile string true Full path to the generated private key
port integer false 2022 Port used to expose the SFTP Gateway
tmpDir string false os.TempDir() Temporary directory used to store uploaded files (see Limitations below)
tmpFilesLifespan duration false "15m" Time for cleaning temporary files that are kept for resumed uploads. Format is a golang duration.

Once JSON is updated, just restart Cells Enterprise.

Connecting to SFTP

Assuming you are using the default configuration, SFTP is accessed through the custom 2022 port. Note that as it is differing from HTTP protocol, it does not go through Cells main Gateway.

Create a Personal Token for a given user. For example, generating a token for user "admin" that will expire in 24h:

$> ./cells-enterprise admin user token -u admin -e 24h
✔ This token for admin will expire on 2021-01-28 14:36:32.206538 +0100 CET m=+86400.243984260.
✔ suDOydSgC-9myGgG27KZPqycDoO--jI_YIJCgvF7Qh0.ciN0O0gLx4xmnsC6BVH6ofivOSSbJoQa3qYowsOuswk
⚠ Make sure to secure it as it grants access to the user resources!

Once you have this token, you can use any SFTP client to connect with USERNAME/TOKEN as login/password.

Limitations

SFTP protocol uploads files in a chunk-based, random-order mode. For this reason a temporary copy of the file is created on the server local filesystem, before being transferred to the underlying datasource.

This is done in a temporary directory. Therefore if you plan to upload huge files via SFTP, you must make sure that the OS "tmp" location has enough available storage. You can customize this location using the "tmpDir" parameter.

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