The second SFTP user is easy. The twentieth exposes every shortcut you took with the first. One group, one config block and one repeatable routine keep a growing user list boring - which is the goal.
Everything in this series scales through a single idea: transfer users belong to one group, sftpusers, and the server config speaks to the group, never to individuals. New person? Create the account, add it to the group, make their folder, done - no config edit, no restart, no exceptions to remember.
The jail guide in this series ends the config with a Match Group sftpusers block. Because the block matches the group, it automatically governs everyone you ever add to it: the same jail shape, the same transfer-only rule, the same logging. Individual Match User blocks are the trap to avoid - ten users means ten blocks, ten chances to typo, and no two accounts behaving alike by the end of the year.
sudo adduser priya - create the account with its passwordsudo usermod -aG sftpusers priya - membership switches on the jail and the transfer-only rule at her next loginsudo mkdir -p /srv/sftp/priya/uploads - her jail folder and its writable inside foldersudo chown root:root /srv/sftp/priya - the jail path obeys the root-ownership rule the jail depends onsudo chown priya:sftpusers /srv/sftp/priya/uploads - the one folder she can write toThe %u in the config's ChrootDirectory /srv/sftp/%u expands to each username, so this single pattern serves every account without names appearing in the config at all.
Each user should have their own key, installed into their own authorized_keys, for the same reason each has their own account: removal becomes surgical. When a person leaves, the offboarding is two moves - sudo usermod -L priya to lock the account today, and deleting her key line - not a shared-password change that disturbs the whole office. Keep a simple register of who has an account and why; the day you cannot explain an account is the day to disable it and see who calls.
User lists rot quietly: contractors finish, staff change roles, test accounts outlive their tests. A monthly ten minute review - list the group with getent group sftpusers, compare against the register, disable what nobody claims - is the cheapest security control in this entire series. Growth is fine; unexamined growth is how a forgotten account becomes somebody else's door.
See the whole Ubuntu SFTP setup done live, with the exact clicks and commands, in the Technical Anshu video.
Watch Full VideoNo. Group membership and folders take effect at the user's next login, and the Match Group block already covers them. Restarts are only for config file changes, and this routine makes none.
They can, using a shared group folder with group write access, but shared space ends individual accountability in the logs. Keep personal jails as the default and add a shared folder only where the team genuinely works on the same files.
Lock the account immediately, remove their key from authorized_keys, and keep their uploaded files until your retention period passes. Delete the account fully only after anything they owned has a new owner.