How to: Turning off SFTP server under Linux / UNIX cpanel server

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: October 10, 2007]

Q. I've CentOS Linux cpanel server. I'd like to turn off SFTP server but only allow SSH for root user. How do I trun off sftp server?

A. OpenSSH / sshd reads configuration data from /etc/ssh/sshd_config. The file contains keyword-argument pairs, one per line. Lines starting with ‘#’ and empty lines are interpreted as comments. Configures an external subsystem such file transfer daemon (SFTP) done through this file only. Arguments should be a subsystem name and a command to execute upon subsystem request. The command sftp-server implements the “sftp” file transfer subsystem. sftp-server is a program that speaks the server side of SFTP protocol. sftp-server is not intended to be called
directly, but from sshd using the Subsystem option.

Disable / Turn off sftp server

Open /etc/ssh/sshd_config file:
# vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Find line that read as follows:
Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
Remove or comment out line by prefixing #:
# Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
Save and close the file. Restart sshd service:
# /etc/init.d/sshd restart

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