Using /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny, is there a way to allow vsftd connectins but block sshd connections? I have tried the following, but this blocks both sshd and vsftp:
/etc/hosts.allow: vsftd : ALL
/etc/hosts.deny: sshd: ALL

I think that vsftpd and sshd both use the same port, and that is why this does not work. Am I correct, or is there some other explanation?

They don't use the same port - FTP is 21 and SSH is 22. Regardless, it is my understanding that TCP wrappers uses service process names for identification - not port numbers. Granted, I don't use TCP wrappers (I use iptables instead), so I could be mistaken about that.

That said, why do you need a rule for vsftpd in your hosts.allow file in the first place? If what you posted is all you have in those files then you don't need anything in hosts.allow, as TCP wrappers will allow access to services by default. hosts.allow is mostly useful for exceptions to what you have in hosts.deny.

AFAICT none of this explains the symptoms you describe, though - unless there's something you aren't telling us. For example, if the misspelled daemon name you posted is what is actually in the hosts.allow file, and there is an "ALL: ALL" in the hosts.deny file, then access to vsftpd would be denied (since no match would occur in hosts.allow, while "ALL: ALL" would match in hosts.deny).

OK, my mistake, I want to allow secure ftp (sftp) and disallow ssh. This is what I want to do. I want to allow users to upload files to a web server using secure ftp, but disallow ssh connections to the same web server except for selected ip addresses. I have attempted to use the following rules:

/etc/hosts.allow:
sshd : <IPaddress1>, <IPaddress2>, <IPaddress3>

/etc/hosts.deny:
sshd : ALL

This works fine for ssh. However when I attempt to load files using secure ftp, the connection is refused by the server. My understanding is that sftp uses ssh. Thus it would seem that this rule effectively blocks both ssh connections and secure ftp connections (sftp). Is there a way around this, (i.e., block ssh but allow sftp) or is this impossible to do using rules in /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny?

I have used iptables to set up rules for other situations. Should I be looking at iptables versus the above method. (Sorry for not making the initial posting more clear, and many THANKS for the initial reply.)