Trouble while executing pureFTPd add user option?

Pureftpd is a free and secure FTP server that makes file uploading easy.

However, it often creates problems when adding users to the PureFTPd server.

At Bobcares, we often receive requests to add users as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s have a deep discussion on this topic and see how our Support Engineers add FTP users easily.

Why we choose Pure-FTPd?

As we all know, cPanel offers two FTP servers, PureFTP and ProFTP. Usually, PureFTP is the default one.

Pure-FTPd is generally regarded as faster FTP than Pro FTPd. But, it will not display status in the status menu.

Pure-FTPd is useful in instances where bandwidth usage is less important than file transfer speed.

Also, it supports virtual user quotas, whereas ProFTPd does not. So, PureFTPd is very much secure than ProFTP and much preferable.

How we use PureFTPd add user option?

Recently, one of our customers approached for assistance in creating Pure-FTPd users.

By default, Pure-FTPd allows creating virtual users instead of real system users.

These users will be added to the PureDB file available at /etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.passwd.

Therefore, to create, view, or modify the /etc/pureftpd.passwd file, we use the below pure-pw command.

pure-pw useradd myuser -u ftpuser -d /home/ftpuser -m

This creates the user myuser which runs as the FTP system user. By default, the user will be chrooted to /home/ftpuser.

But, the virtual users running as the FTP system users can not log in by default. So, to change that behavior, set the option MinUID in /etc/pure-ftpd.conf to 14.

Finally, we need to update the database using the command,

pure-pw mkdb

The virtual user can now access everything in /home/ftpuser. In this way, we can add a user in PureFTPd.

Common errors in Pureftpd add user option

Although the steps to create FTP users look pretty straight-forward, errors are frequent when adding it.

Let’s now see how our Dedicated Engineers identify and solve it.

1. Misconfiguration of Pureftpd

In a recent helpdesk request, one of our customers was having problems when running the command pure-pw list. It resulted in the error:

Unable to open the passwd file: No such file or directory

On checking, we found that the error happened due to a corrupted password file. So to fix the error, we recreated the file and updated the database using these commands.

touch /etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.passwd
pure-pw mkdb -F /etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.pdb

Finally, FTP user creation worked fine.

2. User not created

At times, user creation in Pureftpd via the command line fails to add the user properly. For instance, in one of our customer’s Docker containers user had trouble logging in via FTP.

On detailed analysis, our Support Engineers found that the error happened due to the order of command execution in the script. Here, the customer was using the useradd command before starting the service. Therefore, to fix it, we corrected the order of commands and FTP user addition worked correctly.

[Need more assistance to add Pureftpd users? We’ll help you.]

Conclusion

In short, PureFTPd add user often creates problems while execution. Today, we discussed it in detail and saw how our Support Engineers properly add FTP users for our customers.