[GUIDE] Getting FTP Access to work for accounts without full access to all shares

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
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I was trying to setup a user account for my friend so he could FTP into my WD My Cloud and get some files.  I set up his account, and only gave him access to the share for him of course.  Even though he is my friend, I don’t necessarily want him having full access to my drive.  However, if you don’t give a user account full access to every share, that user can not connect to the FTP server.  I was stumped on how to make this work, but found out how you can bypass this problem.  Of course, you must have FTP access turned on in the first place, don’t forget this important step.

From the WD My Cloud dashboard -

1.  Go to the User tab

2.  Add a new user account (the WD My Cloud will automatically make a share for that user)

3.  Click on the user you just created

4.  Give that user Full Access on EVERY share

5.  Log in with FTP using that username and password on your FTP Client

6.  You should be able to connect and see every share (if not, make sure you enabled FTP in the Network settings)

7.  Disconnect and close your FTP client

8.  Go back to the WD My Cloud dashboard and give that user Full or Read access on their share, whichever you prefer to give them, and No Access on the other shares you do not want them to have access to

9.  Log in with FTP again using your FTP client using that username and password

  1. You should now be able to connect and access their share, but accessing other shares should now give you a “550 Failed to change directory” response

Also, do not forget that only 1 connection is allowed at a time for a user, so make sure to change that setting in your FTP client if you are having any problems connecting or downloading files.

There may be some other way to do this with SSH or something, where you don’t have to temporarily give full access to the user, but for those that don’t want to mess with SSH, this method is fairly easy, albeit a pain.

5 Likes
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Thanks for sharing. 

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Thank you! This was exactly what I was looking for!

4

I have the latest firmware and what I really dislike about this FTP server is that you can see all the other shares.  If this FTP server was proper, when you logged in with an FTP client using the credentials for the share, you should end up in that share and not the root of the drive.  I have never seen a crazy FTP server like this one before and I have seen many.

I was trying to get a PLC to connect to my cloud and write some info into a text file in its own share.  Doesn’t seem possible with this device.  I had to revert back to my old DNS 323 for that functionality.

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To be honest this is all way over my head; all I know is that by following the instructions above, I could at least prevent users I set up from seeing the contents of all my shares even if they could see the shares themselves. I had created an account for a friend to use and was amazed to discover that he could look into everything, when the Dashboard said he had access to his share alone… While I was digging around for a solution I told him to just append /[his_share_name] to the end of the server address in his FTP client, and that landed him right were he was supposed to be.

It is all goofed up though. After giving him full read/write permissions on his share, he had full access only when he used an FTP client. But if he just used the Finder on his Mac to connect to server by hitting ⌘-K (which would be nice since that makes the server appear as a mounted volume on his Desktop), he’d get read-only access. No write.

I don’t know squat about this stuff, but I agree it’s goofed…