[orca-list] FTP server: I'm obviously doing something wrong, although probably am on the right track.

[Christopher Gilland <clgilland07 gmail com>]

So, my gut feeling on this is, I'm probably very very close to having 
this correctly working. I just have one issue, but don't exactly know 
where I'm going wrong, and after reading the docs, I'm still not able to 
get things properly configured, and therefore would like to seek some 
help from one of you who're way more experienced with Linux than I am at 
this point.


So, I did an apt-get, and installed in Ubuntu, VSFTPD.


I set local users to not be able to log in, but did set the directoive 
in vsftpd.conf to allow anonymous users.


I noticed that the


anon_root


directive, IE, anon_root=/var/ftp wasn't present in the conf file. I 
therefore went ahead and inserted it.


Also, this directory wasn't created when installing the pkg, although 
according to the docs I've read online, it should a been, unless I 
misunderstood.


/home/ftp wasn't created either, which I've seen references to.


Anyway, I figured, my home user isn't going to have write access 
permissions to the /var directory, therefore, I did:


sudo mkdir /var/ftp


Then I declared that in the conf file as the anon_root.


Now, that worked perfectly. Here however is where I'm getting really stuck.


In my home directory, /home/chris


I have the subdirectory which comes already created upon installing 
Ubuntu called Music. So, /home/chris/Music.


What the ultimate goal is here is, I'm a professional musician who 
writes my own music. I'd like to give anonymous access for people to 
download my music. No, I'm not distributing illegal music; I'm not stupid!


Right now, the only thing in /home/chris/Music is my own material. 
Nothing more.


So, again, I figured, I don't have permissions to write to anything as 
the chris user in /var. Therefore, I figured I'm going to need super 
user rights to do this.


Therefore I did the following after creating the /var/ftp directory with 
sudo:


sudo ln -s /home/chris/Music Music


My thought was, create a soft link, since hard links cannot link to 
directories. And, I figured do this with sudo, as again, I probably 
otherwise wouldn't have permissions to do anything with modifying the 
/var directory, let alone the /var/ftp directory. That might partially 
be where I went wrong, I'm not totally sure. I'm still really not fully 
getting how ownership and permissions totally work in Linux, so forgive me.


Now, without sudo, if I do:


cd /var/ftp/Music


That does work, and if I then do an ls on that, I do show all the stuff 
which is actually in /home/chris/Music. So, I know my soft link 
definitely did work.


However now, if I go to Filezilla on my Windows machine, log in 
anonymously to the server, I do see that one thing... "Music", but as 
soon as I try to open up the ddirectory by hitting enter on it from the 
list view, I get a toast notification that states that 1 transfer 
failed, but it doesn't really give any detail as to why! it failed.


I suspect, though not positive, that this has something to do with the 
fact that chris owns /home/chris/Music, and not the user who is needed 
for the ftp server, let alone the anonymous user logging in.


I have the vsftpd.conf set to not croot users in their home directories, 
and I also have it set to allow access to local directories on the machine.


I know this isn't really secure doing this, but just to see if it was a 
permissions thing, I decided I'd change the permissions on the 
/home/chris/Music directory just for giggles, to see if that would help. 
I had no intentions of keeping it this way.


chmod 755 /home/chris/Music


The only thing I can think is, to open the directory, you'd need 
execute, therefore that should a been 777 not 755.


Doing this though isn't helping.


Was I wrong in creating the soft link in /var/ftp to /home/chris/Music? 
And further, were there places I used sudo where it really wasn't necessary?


Basically, all I'm wanting is, when the anonymous user logs in, I want 
them to see a folder called Music. When they go there, I actually in all 
actulality want it taking them to /home/chris/Music, and I only want 
them to  be able to download, but not upload.


I feel I'm on the right track, as far as my theories on the 
permissions/ownerships, but I just don't quite know enough to understand 
where I went wrong. Reading docs online about file and directory 
permissions is only confusing me more than it is helping.


I do suffer from a mild learning disability, and have been classified on 
the spectrum of being incredibly mildly mentally challenged in some 
areas, so please be patient with me. I really do want to learn this. I 
love Ubuntu, and feel I'm so dang close to having this. I'm actually 
very very proud of myself for what so far I have! learned all on my own. 
I never suspected I'd do as well with this as I have.


Chris.