Hello I've been working on a VPS (virtual private server) that a friend of mine loaned me and have been running into some issues FTPing into my site. I checked the box and found proftpd running so I decided to check the conf which appears as follows.

# To have more informations about Proftpd configuration
# look at : http://www.proftpd.org/
#

# This is a basic ProFTPD configuration file (rename it to
# 'proftpd.conf' for actual use. It establishes a single server
# and a single anonymous login. It assumes that you have a user/group
# "nobody" and "ftp" for normal operation and anon.

ServerName "ProFTPD"
ServerType inetd
ServerType inetd
DefaultServer on
<Global>
DefaultRoot ~ psacln
DefaultRoot /
AllowOverwrite on
</Global>
DefaultTransferMode binary
UseFtpUsers off

# Port 21 is the standard FTP port.
Port 21
# Umask 022 is a good standard umask to prevent new dirs and files
# from being group and world writable.
Umask 022

# To prevent DoS attacks, set the maximum number of child processes
# to 30. If you need to allow more than 30 concurrent connections
# at once, simply increase this value. Note that this ONLY works
# in standalone mode, in inetd mode you should use an inetd server
# that allows you to limit maximum number of processes per service
# (such as xinetd)
MaxInstances 30

#Following part of this config file were generate by PSA automatically
#Any changes in this part will be overwritten by next manipulation
#with Anonymous FTP feature in PSA control panel.

#Include directive should point to place where FTP Virtual Hosts configurations
#preserved

ScoreboardFile /var/run/proftpd/scoreboard

# Primary log file mest be outside of system logrotate province

TransferLog /usr/local/psa/var/log/xferlog

#Change default group for new files and directories in vhosts dir to psacln

<Directory /var/www/vhosts>
GroupOwner psacln
</Directory>

# Disable PAM authentication
AuthPAM off

# delay on login off
IdentLookups off
UseReverseDNS off

Include /etc/proftpd.include

Now I'm not SUPER familiar with proftpd however I do know at least it's basics and this is what I have managed to deduce this config means. The server is running in inited mode, and will only start when a user attempts to connect to the data port (21). It works since I can connect to the FTP server, I just cannot log in. It also looks like this should be authing users from /etc/passwd and should lock them to a home directory of the psacln group? however no user in /etc/passwd is able to be authenticated nor is any user that has been created by plesk itself.

This won't help you, but I sympathize.

I used to run ProFTPD to 'share' ... stuff.

Anyway, long story short, it was the only Linux FTP server that came close to what FileZilla is to Windows. However, it was a living nightmare to get it to work with standard Linux clients. gFTP would never connect properly. Igloo would, however.

But, when I tried to implement TLS/SSL security (aka FTP-S) to my ProFTPD installation, it all went to hell. Nothing would connect, and then, somehow, I was hacked. Go figure.

My best reccomendation is that - unless you absolutely positively need true FTP - then forget about it, and do 'fake' ftp over an SSH connection (aka S-FTP).