Hi there,

My housemate and I have successfully set up a server running on Redhat 9 - 2.4.20-8. We used Apache 2.0.52, PHP 5.0.3 and MySQL 4.0.23.

Everything went pretty swimmingly as far as these components were concerned and the web server is working. However since we are going to be using it for 2 different dissertation projects we would like to be able to upload files via FTP to two different directories within /usr/local/apache2/htdocs called william and robert.

We attempted to do this with vsftpd 2.0.1 but ran into a horrific number of problems and are now stuck at a dead end. There is plenty of mention on the internet of how to log on as an anonymous user but we would like to log on as either robert or william, with a password which will dump us into /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/robert or /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/william respectively.

We pissed around with a number of settings in the vsftpd.conf file such as...

chroot_list_enable
chroot_local_user
passwd_chroot_enable (changing the home directory in /etc/passwd to reflect this)

...as well as a number of others.

At the end of it all we just can't get the server to accept the passwords (which we created and tested by logging into to the shell) for the robert and william users. It says 'login incorrect'.

Please bear in mind that we are fairly new to this, have not set up a webserver before and are still relatively new to Linux. Everything up until now has been done with a serious amount of RTFMing , Googling and trial and error (as well as hopes and dreams) . If you could perhaps give us an idea of where we are going wrong, or suggest an FTP server that isn't such a bastard to set up we'd be very grateful.

Cheers,

Bobson

Can you post your vsftpd.conf config file.

hey thanks for the reply....

anonymous_enable=NO
chroot_local_user=YES
guest_enable=YES
guest_username=ftp
hide_ids=YES
listen=YES
listen_address=192.168.0.2
local_enable=YES
max_clients=100
max_per_ip=1
nopriv_user=ftp
pam_service_name=ftp
pasv_max_port=65535
pasv_min_port=64000
session_support=NO
use_localtime=YES
user_config_dir=/etc/vsftpd/users
userlist_enable=YES
userlist_file=/etc/vsftpd/denied_users
virtual_use_local_privs=YES
xferlog_enable=YES

async_abor_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
dirlist_enable=NO
download_enable=NO
local_umask=0027

...denied_users contains all of the accounts on the computer except william and robert. I'm not really sure what the /etc/vsftpd/users directory is for. We started off with the recommended .conf file and fiddled around with that for ages before replacing it with this one from some tutorial on the net (with a few minor alterations).

How is the ftp account set up? Are you sure you want to create a guest account for them to login with?

I should also point out that there are several security problems with ftp - mainly that passwords are sent in plain text. Using sftp or scp may be a better alternative.

Thanks

I was able to connect with dreamweaver to my server via SFTP with no problems at all. And to think we wasted all those hours trying to set it all up. Thank again for your help.

Bobson