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Using logical directories to simplify your Transfer Family directory structures

To simplify your AWS Transfer Family server directory structure, you can use logical directories. With logical directories, you can construct a virtual directory structure that uses user-friendly names that your users navigate when they connect to your Amazon S3 bucket or Amazon EFS file system. When you use logical directories, you can avoid disclosing absolute directory paths, Amazon S3 bucket names, and EFS file system names to your end users.

You can use logical directories to set the user’s root directory to a desired location within your storage hierarchy, by performing what is known as a chroot operation. In this mode, users are not able to navigate to a directory outside of the home or root directory that you've configured for them.

For example, although an Amazon S3 user has been scoped down to access only /mybucket/home/${transfer:UserName}, some clients allow users to traverse up a folder to /mybucket/home. In this situation, the user lands back on their intended home directory only after logging out of and back in to the Transfer Family server again. Performing a chroot operation can prevent this situation from occurring.

You can create your own directory structure across buckets and prefixes. This feature is useful if you have a workflow that is expecting a specific directory structure that you can't replicate through bucket prefixes. You can also link to multiple non-contiguous locations within Amazon S3, similar to creating a symbolic link in a Linux file system where your directory path references a different location in the file system.

Rules for using logical directories

Before you build your logical directory mappings, you should understand the following rules:

  • When Entry is "/", you can have only one mapping because overlapping paths are not allowed.
  • Targets can use the ${transfer:UserName} variable if the bucket or file system path has been parameterized based on the user name.
  • Targets can be paths in different buckets or file systems, but you must make sure that the mapped IAM role (the Role parameter in the response) provides access to those buckets or file systems.
  • Do not specify the HomeDirectory parameter because this value is implied by the Entry Target pairs when using the LOGICAL value for the HomeDirectoryType parameter.
  • Targets should begin with a slash (/) character, but do not use trailing slashes (/) when you specify the Target. For example, /DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/images is acceptable, while DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/images and /DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/images/ are not.

Important
The root directory must exist on start-up. For Amazon S3, this means you must have already created an empty-byte object ending with / to create the root folder.

Implementing logical directories and chroot

To use logical directories and chroot features, you must do the following:

Turn on logical directories for each user. Do this by setting the HomeDirectoryType parameter to LOGICAL when you create or update your user.

"HomeDirectoryType": "LOGICAL"

Chroot

For chroot, create a directory structure that consists of a single Entry and Target pairing for each user. The root folder is the Entry point, and the Target is the location in your bucket or file system to map to.

[ Example for Amazon S3 ]

[{"Entry": "/", "Target": "/mybucket/jane"}]

[ Example for Amazon EFS ]

[{"Entry": "/", "Target": "/fs-faa1a123/jane"}]

You can use an absolute path as in the previous example, or you can use a dynamic substitution for the user name with ${transfer:UserName}, as in the following example.

[{"Entry": "/", "Target":
"/mybucket/${transfer:UserName}"}]

In the preceding example, the user is locked to their root directory and cannot traverse up higher in the hierarchy.

Virtual directory structure

For a virtual directory structure, you can create multiple Entry Target pairings, with targets anywhere in your S3 buckets or EFS file systems, including across multiple buckets or file systems, as long as the user’s IAM role mapping has permissions to access them.

In the following virtual structure example, when the user logs into AWS SFTP, they are in the root directory with subdirectories of /pics, /doc, /reporting, and /anotherpath/subpath/financials.

[
{"Entry": "/pics", "Target": "/bucket1/pics"}, 
{"Entry": "/doc", "Target": "/bucket1/anotherpath/docs"},
{"Entry": "/reporting", "Target": "/reportingbucket/Q1"},
{"Entry": "/anotherpath/subpath/financials", "Target": "/reportingbucket/financials"}]

Note
You can only upload files to the specific folders that you map. This means that in the previous example, you cannot upload to /anotherpath or anotherpath/subpath directories; only anotherpath/subpath/financials. You also cannot map to those paths directly, as overlapping paths are not allowed.
For example, assume that you create the following mappings:

{
   "Entry": "/pics", 
   "Target": "/mybucket/pics"
}, 
{
   "Entry": "/doc", 
   "Target": "/mybucket/mydocs"
}, 
{
   "Entry": "/temp", 
   "Target": "/mybucket"
}

You can only upload files to those buckets. When you first connect through sftp, you are dropped into the root directory, /. If you attempt to upload a file to that directory, the upload fails. The following commands show an example sequence:

sftp> pwd
Remote working directory: /
sftp> put file
Uploading file to /file
remote open("/file"): No such file or directory

To upload to any directory/sub-directory, you must explicitly map the path to the sub-directory.

For more information about configuring logical directories and chroot for your users, including an AWS CloudFormation template that you can download and use, see Simplify your AWS SFTP Structure with chroot and logical directories in the AWS Storage Blog.