How can I permit anonymous access to local user home directory with vsftpd?

Question

I have installed vsftpd and locked local user access to their home directories.

Now I like anonymous to access some user's home directories. I have tried these solutions but they didn't work.

First, I have made a new vsftpd configuration files for anonymous only, and set in that this directive:

anon_root=/home/[username]

This solution didn't work.

Later I have place this directive in main vsftp configuration file:

anonymous_enabled=YES

and then set anon_root respectively.

Bu this solution didn't work too.

How could I do that?

OS: CentOS 6

How does it not work ? What error messages are reported? What relevant messages are in your logs ? Is SELinux enabled and are there any relevant log messages ? — user9517, Mar 06 '15 at 06:28
With first solution anonymous couldn't login. With second, I get this error: 550 Failed to change directory. — JalalJaberi, Mar 06 '15 at 06:31
I checked log files. With second solution anonymous can login but can't change directory to local user home directory — JalalJaberi, Mar 06 '15 at 06:44
File ownership probably. Typically a user home directory should not be accessible to others, let alone the default anonymous ftp user. — HBruijn, Mar 06 '15 at 07:31

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 06 '15 at 07:54

550 Failed to change directory

With SELinux disabled, this will almost certainly be a simple filesystem permissions issue. If you look at a typical /home directory entry for a user you will see

ls -l /home
drwx------. 40 user user  4096 Mar  5 11:03 user

This is normal and as such will deny access to the anonymous user. The anonymous user really shouldn't have access to arbitrary user home directories.

How can I permit anonymous access to local user home directory with vsftpd?

1 Answers1