I have almost got my server set up. Today I managed to get the FTP server set up, using ProFTPD. Installing it was a breeze with Linux, as usual, but configuring it was much trickier for me. More steep learning curves. I have managed to set up users with FTP access to their home directories, and as a result I have had to move some sites from /var/www/domains to /home/user/domains. Once moving the directories over I have permission problems, ownership problems and access problems. A bit of chown-ing, chmod-ding and several resetarts later, it was all working. I was mostly getting 550 errors on uploading directories. Following several useful tutorials and doing some serious Googling got me sorted though.
Too tired to go into details for this one, but ensuring that the user has full ownership of all directories and it is CHMOD 755 seemed to the the trick. Pretty obvious, but in the process of moving a web directory things got really messed up. Also haveing virtual hosts set up required an additional field in the proftpd.conf file.
The good news is that this means is that I can now confidently host sites for my family, as I can set up users with home directories, and configure the Apache config files so that they can host websites, including simple static HTML, blogs and even MySQL driven sites. And it is another step towards an alternative career in web design and management, maybe……
One tip for those looking to set up their own FTP, read the tutorials on security, as there are lots of recommended tweaks and additions to the proftpd.conf file to make it more secure, as at less risk of DOS attacks and the such like.
