pyftpdlib 2.0.1

Very fast asynchronous FTP server library

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About

Python FTP server library provides a high-level portable interface to easily write very efficient, scalable and asynchronous FTP servers with Python. It is the most complete RFC-959 FTP server implementation available for Python programming language.

Features

• Extremely lightweight, fast and scalable (see why and benchmarks).

• Uses sendfile(2) (see pysendfile) system call for uploads (Linux only).

• Uses epoll() / kqueue() / select() to handle concurrency asynchronously.

• …But can optionally skip to a multiple thread / process model (as in: you’ll be free to block or use slow filesystems).

• Portable: entirely written in pure Python.

• Supports FTPS (RFC-4217), IPv6 (RFC-2428), Unicode file names (RFC-2640), MLSD/MLST commands (RFC-3659).

• Support for virtual users and virtual filesystem.

• Flexible system of “authorizers” able to manage both “virtual” and “real” users on on both UNIX and Windows.

Performances

Despite being written in an interpreted language, pyftpdlib has transfer rates comparable or superior to common UNIX FTP servers written in C. It usually tends to scale better (see benchmarks) because whereas vsftpd and proftpd use multiple processes to achieve concurrency, pyftpdlib only uses one (see the C10K problem).

pyftpdlib vs. proftpd 1.3.4

benchmark type	pyftpdlib	proftpd	speedup
STOR (client -> server)	585.90 MB/sec	600.49 MB/sec	-0.02x
RETR (server -> client)	1652.72 MB/sec	1524.05 MB/sec	+0.08
300 concurrent clients (connect, login)	0.19 secs	9.98 secs	+51x
STOR (1 file with 300 idle clients)	585.59 MB/sec	518.55 MB/sec	+0.1x
RETR (1 file with 300 idle clients)	1497.58 MB/sec	1478.19 MB/sec	0x
300 concurrent clients (RETR 10M file)	3.41 secs	3.60 secs	+0.05x
300 concurrent clients (STOR 10M file)	8.60 secs	11.56 secs	+0.3x
300 concurrent clients (QUIT)	0.03 secs	0.39 secs	+12x

pyftpdlib vs. vsftpd 2.3.5

benchmark type	pyftpdlib	vsftpd	speedup
STOR (client -> server)	585.90 MB/sec	611.73 MB/sec	-0.04x
RETR (server -> client)	1652.72 MB/sec	1512.92 MB/sec	+0.09
300 concurrent clients (connect, login)	0.19 secs	20.39 secs	+106x
STOR (1 file with 300 idle clients)	585.59 MB/sec	610.23 MB/sec	-0.04x
RETR (1 file with 300 idle clients)	1497.58 MB/sec	1493.01 MB/sec	0x
300 concurrent clients (RETR 10M file)	3.41 secs	3.67 secs	+0.07x
300 concurrent clients (STOR 10M file)	8.60 secs	9.82 secs	+0.07x
300 concurrent clients (QUIT)	0.03 secs	0.01 secs	+0.14x

For more benchmarks see here.

Command line usage

Start a FTP server, with an anonymous user with write permissions, on port 2121:

$ python3 -m pyftpdlib --write
RuntimeWarning: write permissions assigned to anonymous user.
  self._check_permissions(username, perm)
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] concurrency model: async
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] masquerade (NAT) address: None
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] passive ports: None
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] >>> starting FTP server on 0.0.0.0:2121, pid=763634 <<<

API usage

>>> from pyftpdlib.authorizers import DummyAuthorizer
>>> from pyftpdlib.handlers import FTPHandler
>>> from pyftpdlib.servers import FTPServer
>>>
>>> authorizer = DummyAuthorizer()
>>> authorizer.add_user("user", "12345", "/home/giampaolo", perm="elradfmwMT")
>>> authorizer.add_anonymous("/home/nobody")
>>>
>>> handler = FTPHandler
>>> handler.authorizer = authorizer
>>>
>>> server = FTPServer(("127.0.0.1", 21), handler)
>>> server.serve_forever()
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] >>> starting FTP server on 127.0.0.1:21 <<<
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] poller: <class 'pyftpdlib.ioloop.Epoll'>
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] masquerade (NAT) address: None
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] passive ports: None
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] use sendfile(2): True
[I 13-02-19 10:55:45] 127.0.0.1:34178-[] FTP session opened (connect)
[I 13-02-19 10:55:48] 127.0.0.1:34178-[user] USER 'user' logged in.
[I 13-02-19 10:56:27] 127.0.0.1:34179-[user] RETR /home/giampaolo/.vimrc completed=1 bytes=1700 seconds=0.001
[I 13-02-19 10:56:39] 127.0.0.1:34179-[user] FTP session closed (disconnect).

For other code samples read the tutorial

Donate

A lot of time and effort went into making pyftpdlib as it is right now. If you feel pyftpdlib is useful to you or your business and want to support its future development please consider donating me some money.