first question:

i can ftp into my computer from another machine just fine. the only problem is i have to drop the firewall in order to do it. when the firewall is on, i can not log in even with pots 20-21 open. when i drop the firewall i can connect. when the firewall is dropped and i log in another port opens up way up in the 20000 range. this seems to be relativly random. since ports up to 1024 are for system processes, would it be a good idea to open all ports above 1024, so that the random ports needed for ftp can be accessed? is there a better way to do it? i know it is not good to have open ports but how much of a security risk is it to have all ports above 1024 open? (by open i mean add a rule to firestarter to allow connections through the ports)

second question:

i want to have 3 areas in my ftp server but limit access to them depending on the user. for example i would have /home/ftpusers as the main area and under that i would have three folders. /home/ftpusers would be accessable to all users with a password and username. but the three folders would be limited to certain users. what i am thinking of doing is making localuser accounts all with the home directory of /home/ftpusers ( i will jail everyone, in thier home directory) and make all those users part the group ftpusers1. then i would set the group permission of the /home/ftpuser folder to 777. what an easy effective way to limit access to the three folders under /home/ftpusers? should i create three seperate groups and set ownership of the folder to each group and then add users to those groups?


i am using vsftpd.

thanks in advance

i played around with the permissions and got it to work just like i said in 2.

and there was some oter problem causing the behavior in question 1. it wasnt the firewall causing it. it was something in the conf file.

disregard the questions.

thanks