NetApp, CIFS, vFilers and FTP

I had a moment of sheer stupidity, dealing with vFilers and CIFS on our NetApp. I was trying to setup FTP to our CIFS on a non default vFiler and was getting no where fast. Tech Support for NetApp left a little something to be desired too, as they really could not seem to get what I was trying to do and they failed miserably calling me back with a proper response. I finally figured it out through trial and error, so I hope this helps someone.

The trick to this is to under stand that when you make another vFiler, you have to run all the commands for the vFiler (ftpd commands and cifs commands), under the context of the newly created vFiler and all the files that need to be edited will be edited under the new vFiler as well.

I logged into the NetApp and typed vfiler status then hit enter. This gave me the names of the running vFilers

TESTSAN1> vfiler status                  
vfiler0                                    running
vfiler_test                              running

I then change the context to the "test" vFiler. This is where my and it seems NetApp's Technical support's confusion came in. 


TESTSAN1>vfiler context vfiler_test


the prompt at this point changes to the new vFiler.

vfiler_test@TESTSAN1>                  



At this point you begin to make the changes that you need to enable FTP on your vFiler. I typed options ftpd to get a listing of all the possible configuration settings that could be made to the ftpd service.

vfiler_test@TESTSAN1> options ftpd                

ftpd.3way.enable             off                                
ftpd.anonymous.enable        off                            
ftpd.anonymous.home_dir                                  
ftpd.anonymous.name          anonymous              
ftpd.auth_style              ntlm                                 
ftpd.bypass_traverse_checking off                       
ftpd.dir.override            /vol/TEST_DATAVOL 
ftpd.dir.restriction         off                                  
ftpd.enable                  off                                     
ftpd.locking                 none                                 
ftpd.log.enable              on                                   
ftpd.log.filesize            512k                                
ftpd.log.nfiles              6                                     
ftpd.tcp_window_size         28960                     



I enabled the ftpd service first.

vfiler_test@TESTSAN1> options ftpd.enable on         





I then changed the FTP authentication style. For my environment ntlm is what we needed but you can use unix, ntlm and mixed.

vfiler_test@TESTSAN1> options ftpd.auth_style ntlm         


If you are using ntlm you have to specify the CIFS home directory in the /etc/cifs_homedir.cfg that is located in the etc$ share of the CIFS. In my case the path was \\TEST\etc$ I opened the path by using Windows Explorer and used a text editor to edited this file. Using the examples provided in the file I was able to edit the path in the file and saved the file to the same place in the etc$ share. Once you have specified the CIFS home directory you then run the cifs homedir load.


vfiler_test@TESTSAN1> cifs homedir load        



At this point you can make any other changes that you need such as ftpd.locking or the ftp.dir.override. I was now able to successfully connect to the CIFS and so long as I have proper NTFS permissions I can FTP files to the locations that I need to.