Advanced OS X Server FTP Settings or PureFTPD

Question

Robin0815 Author

Level 1

4 points

Advanced OS X Server FTP Settings or PureFTPD

Hello Community !,

I am using OS X Server for a while now and pretty much does everything I need.

However, the ftp settings are not that extensive.

What I am Looking for is

(1) give each User a specific home folder

For example :

User "test" :

Home Folder = /Users/Test

User "my_friend" :

Home Folder = /Users/Me

User "music" :

Home Folder /Volumes/Music/

(2) Add Virtual Folders

For Example User "my_friend" hast a virtual folder to "/Volumes/Music/"

(3) Permissions for Anonymous Access

OS X Server gives this feature - but it is by far useless because i cant adjust what this user can see and what not.

(4) Giving the right Permissions.

(this would be a solution to all problems if there is a way)

For example :

I set my ftp root Folder to "/Users"

and then adjust it like

User "test" can only see the folder "test" and "music"

User "my_friend" can only see the folder "music"

user "anonymous" can only see a folder named "pub"

and so on...

These are my only questions so if you have any help here

The Last Hope : PureFTPD - this is not working on my OS X Mountain Lion Server - it installs everything, but it does not work at all.

Is start the server - the service is running - but i cant access anything through the PureFTPd Manager.

I am quite familiar with the Terminal and all the folders hidden in Mac OS X that have to do with the Services and all that stuff. But I am not a pro and therefore I need your help.

Thanks in Advance

Robin

MacBook, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on May 23, 2013 12:56 PM

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Answer 1

pterobyte

Level 6

11,104 points

May 24, 2013 2:22 AM in response to Robin0815

The pureFTPd binary that comes with PureFTPd manager does not work on Mountain Lion. You will need to build pureFTPd separately and only then install PureFTPd manager.

In a nutshell:

-Install XCode or at least the XCode command line tools

-get the source from http://download.pureftpd.org/pub/pure-ftpd/releases/pure-ftpd-1.0.36.tar.gz

-configure it using:

./configure --with-everything --with-tls --with-virtualchroot --disable-dependency-tracking

-build and install using:

make

make install

-Install PureFTPd Manager and enjoy

HTH,

Alex

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Answer 2

Robin0815 Author

Level 1

4 points

May 24, 2013 3:20 AM in response to pterobyte

Hey Thanks for the Help !

I had a long night yesterday ( time in germany is a bit shifted ) - and figured it a bit out.

At the end it kind of worked with the PureFTPd Mager package, but it was still unstable - and i will try this :

My plan is nearly the same as yours :

Install PureFTPd Manager with the PureFTPd 10.0.32

Install Xcode Command Line Tools ( I had that installed already because of compiling some other stuff )

Then in Terminal :

curl -O ftp://ftp.pureftpd.org/pub/pure-ftpd/releases/pure-ftpd-1.0.36.tar.gz

tar -zxvf pure-ftpd-1.0.36.tar.gz

cd pure-ftpd-1.0.36

./configure --with-everything --with-virtualchroot

sudo make install-strip

sudo /usr/local/sbin/pure-ftpd

Here I do a reboot just to go the safe way. It only worked for me when I rebooted after install.

Otherwise it couldnt start the ftp service or started it and then after stopping it wont start again.

Also it asked twice for a password ...I just made a reboot to be sure

After reboot I configured the PureFTPd Manager.

At first I made sure to use 1 database only (The PureDB ) - it started working somehow when i removed it while testing so I also want to get the more easy solution and no MySQL or PostgreSQL implementation ( even thogh it would be nice having it)

In the end i changed some permissions in the created /Users/ftp folder to do all the ftp stuff there.

Then added the User Accounts and changed the vHosts and vUser Folders to my own ones.

I think there is no easy solution for this so we either have to use the limited (but for me somehow very stable) Apple integrated FTP - Or do some coding and adjusting for PureFTPd and use it.

I can also recommend using WebDAV.

All I wanted to do with the ftp was also doable with WebDAV - now i have both services started just to make sure that i can reach my server if ftp is not working.

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Answer 3

May 11, 2015 12:04 PM in response to Robin0815

Great! Thank you for the hint!

I installed it on a OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite today and it worked great.

Easy way:

- Install XCode or at least the XCode command line tools

- Install Homebrew: (http://brew.sh) :

on Terminal paste: ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

- Install pure-ftpd:

on Terminal paste: brew install pure-ftpd

- Do a custom install of only PureFTPd Manager ( not the Binarys)

Side note: the PureFTPd Manager is a little touchy but it works.

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Answer 4

Aug 2, 2015 8:54 PM in response to Bernd_Hal

Hi Bernd,

What authentication are you using? How is it configured?

I compiled from source --with-everything

Then "sudo make install-strip"

I have set up the conf file and am using the perl wrapper to start the service

but I have no idea how to get PAMd to work even after reading the documentation.

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Answer 5

KeithCxx

Level 1

38 points

Sep 19, 2015 8:49 AM in response to Bernd_Hal

Hi Bernd,

From what I gather reading the posts, PureFTPd is not suitable for Yosemite? I'd have tread in territory I'm not happy about to get it to work?

Are there any other solutions?

I'm currently successfully using it on a 10.5.8 system but it's time to upgrade for other reasons so I'm concerned.

If there's no other choice, is there a more detailed step by step walk through I could get since I'm not sure enough to know if there's obvious skills I should posses but don't before going into terminal and Xcode.

Thanks,

Keith

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