Confusing thread title I know. I'm having a brain fart here.

I have an ftp server(vsftpd CentOS 5.2) that has an account that I need to share files with others. But I only want the people to have read access to the files yet need the account owner to have write access. How can I have a user account own the files yet have the end users read only?

I've tried making 2 users:

user 1: accountowner(read/write/etc)
user 2: readonly(read/download only)

I made accountowner and readonly users. Made them both have the same home directories. Made the owner accountowner with 750 permissions. Then made the readonly a member of accountowner's group. When I try to FTP I get "FAIL LOGIN:"


What am I missing here? Or is there a better way to do this?


thanks!

Please, post the contents of your vsftpd.conf file. Specifically, check variable write_enable=YES - unless this is allowed, you only have read-only ftp server.

I have write_enable=YES in vstpd.conf


Here's what I ended up doing and it seems to be working.

Created a new account: accountowner and its home directory is the same as the readonly account. I made accountowner the owner and group for the directory. I added accountowners group to the readonly account and made the permissions of the directory 750. Added both users to the user_list, set both accounts shell to /sbin/nologin.


For some reason thats pretty much what I tried before making this thread and it didnt' work. Then it started working. Im sure there was user error on my part somewhere.


What do you think? Ok way of doing this?