Using groups simplifies the administration of multiple accounts by letting you assign settings once to a group, instead of multiple times to each individual user.
SFTPGo supports two types of groups:
- primary groups
- secondary groups
- membership groups
A user can be a member of a primary group and many secondary and membership groups. Depending on the group type, the settings are inherited differently.
The following settings are inherited from the primary group:
- home dir, if set for the group will replace the one defined for the user. The
%username%
placeholder is replaced with the username - filesystem config, if the provider set for the group is different from the "local provider" will replace the one defined for the user. The
%username%
placeholder is replaced with the username within the defined "prefix", for any vfs, and the "username" for the SFTP filesystem config - max sessions, quota size/files, upload/download bandwidth, upload/download/total data transfer, max upload size, external auth cache time, ftp_security, default share expiration, password expiration, password strength: if they are set to
0
for the user they are replaced with the value set for the group, if different from0
. The password strength defined at group level is only enforce when users change their password - expires_in, if defined and the user does not have an expiration date set, defines the expiration of the account in number of days from the creation date
- TLS username, check password hook disabled, pre-login hook disabled, external auth hook disabled, filesystem checks disabled, allow API key authentication, anonymous user: if they are not set for the user they are replaced with the value set for the group
- starting directory, if the user does not have a starting directory set, the value set for the group is used, if any. The
%username%
placeholder is replaced with the username
The following settings are inherited from the primary and secondary groups:
- virtual folders, file patterns, permissions: they are added to the user configuration if the user does not already have a setting for the configured path. The
/
path is ignored for secondary groups. The%username%
placeholder is replaced with the username within the virtual path, the defined "prefix", for any vfs, and the "username" for the SFTP and HTTP filesystem config - per-source bandwidth limits
- per-source data transfer limits
- allowed/denied IPs
- denied login methods and protocols
- two factor auth protocols
- web client/REST API permissions
The settings from the primary group are always merged first. no setting is inherited from "membership" groups.
The final settings are a combination of the user settings and the group ones. For example you can define the following groups:
- "group1", it has a virtual directory to mount on
/vdir1
- "group2", it has a virtual directory to mount on
/vdir2
- "group3", it has a virtual directory to mount on
/vdir3
If you define users with a virtual directory to mount on /vdir
and make them member of all the above groups, they will have virtual directories mounted on /vdir
, /vdir1
, /vdir2
, /vdir3
. If users already have a virtual directory to mount on /vdir1
, the group's one will be ignored.
Please note that if the same virtual path is set in more than one secondary group the behavior is undefined. For example if a user is a member of two secondary groups and each secondary group defines a virtual folder to mount on the /vdir2
path, the virtual folder mounted on /vdir2
may change with every login.