Are you frustrated with the error proftpd permission denied?

The free and open-source software ProFTPD is compatible with Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows (via Cygwin).

Unfortunately, in certain situations, while attempting to create, modify or upload files via FTP we receive the error as permission denied. This is due to incorrect permission of files and folders, wrong ownership, problems with the file path, etc.

At Bobcares, we often receive requests to fix this error as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s discuss this error in detail and see how or Support Engineers fix it.

Why and how can we identify this error?

Basically, the permission denied error occurs due to incomplete permissions of folders and files in the path of FTP users.

The user without write permission is one of the major causes of this error.

For instance, ProFTPD command prompt error appears as:

While trying to create, modify or upload files via FTP, receiving the permission denied error causes frustration.

Let’s now discuss the major causes of this error along with the ways we fix it.

How to fix proftpd permission denied?

At Bobcares, where we have more than a decade of expertise in managing servers, we see that many of our clients face problems with error proftpd permission denied

Now, let’s see how our Support Engineers fixed these errors.

The common cause of the error is mainly due to:

• Incorrect permission
• ownership problem
• Problem with the file path

1. Incorrect permission

Recently one of the customers approached us with the permission denied error while uploading the files via Filezilla. While trying to upload the customer was stuck with this error.

550 test.txt: Permission denied

While analyzing with the error, our Support Engineers were able to recreate this. They found that the problem happened due to the incorrect permission set to the files and folders.

We then corrected the permission of the files and folders.

chmod -R 0775 /var/www/your_folder

This fixed the error.

2. Ownership problem

In addition, some times the same problem will be continuing even after correcting the permission of files and folders.

This happens due to the wrong ownership. We correct the ownership and fix such problems using the following command.

chown -R userftp:userftp /srv/www/

Here,  R is used to set the same ownership to all the files and folders inside the folder www.

2. Problem with the file path

Frequently, many users come with the issue due to incorrect path set in the configuration file. The customer was facing a problem to upload files to the website. The customer has a web server in /var/www and the default FTP upload directory in /home/admin. The customer changed the default to /var/www but he was receiving permission denied error.see

When we checked further, we could see that the problem was /var/www is owned by www-data, but the customer logged in as admin. We opened the  /etc/passwd and changed admin’s home directory from /home/admin to /var/www.

Then we ran:

chown admin /var/www

This solved the problem and the customer uploaded files to his website.

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Conclusion

In short, problems like incorrect permission, ownership problem, etc can create the error proftpd permission denied. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers assisted our customers to fix this error.