When you setup proftpd on your Linux server, you may sometimes run into permission errors. By default, the home directory of the logged in user to FTP is that which is created when you make the user (using adduser or so). However, if you change the directory for this user, you’ll often find that you won’t be able to write files to that folder. So here are some tips on debugging this process:
1) Check the folder ownership. In order to write files to a folder, you need to belong to the folder’s usergroup or owner. You can check the folder’s usergroup by:
ls -o
This will list the group and file owner. To change the group to one that your FTP user belongs to use:
chgrp <folder> <groupname>
To change the owner use:
chown <file> <user>
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2) Check the permissions of the folder. Use ls -o to check the read/write permissions of the folder. We want the group users to be able to read/write/execute on the folder, so you want to chmod to something like 775. You can do this using the chmod command:
chmod 775 <file/folder>
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3) Also check your proftpd config that make’s sure the directory is chrooted (Configure proftpd on Debian). There are a number of directives you can use to setup the folder permissions, such as creating <directory /> blocks. This guide was particularly useful to me: http://www.proftpd.org/docs/howto/Directory.html
