Checking if localhost is making ftp connection - unix

Question

Is there is a way to check if localhost is making ftp connection to other server?
The requirement is like this: Local host -> serverA
Remote server --> serverB.
Need to check if serverA is making ftp connection to serverB.
So whenever serverA is making ftp connection to serverB, how to get notified.
I tried like this: ps -ef | grep -i ftp; however since ps process too would get notified, so can't make this use in shell script, is there any better way which checks if serverA is making ftp connections to serverB, and if so, get notified / logs to a file.
Thanks

Answer 1

Your problem of "ps -ef | grep -i ftp" also reporting the 'ps' process is resulting from grep searching the string "ftp". This would also hit a lot of other processes which also have the word 'ftp' in it's command line.
To fix that check if you have the procps tools "pgrep" and "pkill" installed. They are very helpful for 'grepping' processes and running commandlines.
To solve your initial problem you might check if you have the 'ss' (show sockets from iproute2 packages) command installed.
It's output might be useful (11.22.33.44 is you local IP 130.133.3.130 the remote):
root:sigkill:~/# ss -p|cat
State Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address:Port Peer Address:Port
[...]
ESTAB 0 0 11.22.33.44:43681 130.133.3.130:ftp users:(("ftp",19729,4),("ftp",19729,3))
[...]

Answer 2

There are a few approaches that you could take:
You could poll running processes for ftp. This wouldn't catch other FTP clients (if you care about that), and it wouldn't catch very short ftp sessions that slip between polls.
If your system supports execution logging, you could log all executions of ftp. Again, this wouldn't catch other FTP clients.
You could watch for outbound connections on port 21/tcp using some mechanism provided by your system (for instance, on Linux, use an iptables rule that matches outbound FTP connections to any servers that you care about and logs them using the LOG target). This would catch all connections regardless of client, but tracking down the process and user would be a little more complicated.

Answer 3

You can use $ grep ftp /etc/services to list the current ftp connections.
$ grep ftp /etc/services
ftp-data 20/tcp
ftp-data 20/udp
...
ftp 21/tcp
ftp 21/udp fsp fspd
...
sftp 115/tcp
sftp 115/udp
...
ftp-data 20/sctp # FTP
ftp 21/sctp # FTP
...
ftps-data 989/tcp # ftp protocol, data, over TLS/SSL
ftps-data 989/udp # ftp protocol, data, over TLS/SSL
ftps 990/tcp # ftp protocol, control, over TLS/SSL
ftps 990/udp # ftp protocol, control, over TLS/SSL
Use netstat to see the open connections. e.g., For simple FTP...
$ netstat -tan | grep \:21
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:21 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 :::21 :::* LISTEN