Subject: Accessing directories outside of the ftp structure?

From: "Kevin W. Reed" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 12:55:55 -0700 (MST)

I've just installed wu-ftp onto an SCO Unix box and it seems to be working
just great...

Now I'm trying to make available a lot of information that is already
on the system in a Disability BBS.  Under its area of the system, there
are a number of directories that contain 30 or more megabytes of 
information files and programs.

FTP is setup in /usr/local/ftp which looks to be pretty typical.

The BBS directories are located in 	/bbs/bbsfiles/DIME with a bunch of
directories under DIME containing the information that I want to make
available.

So... an attempt to provide a symbolic link from the BBS directories
to the ftp directories like...

	ln -s /bbs/bbsfiles/DIME /usr/local/ftp/pub/DIME

and away we go....  But it doesn't work.

The DIME directories are owned by the bbs but there are read permissions
to all the directories and files.  When I try to cd DIME however, I get
DIME: No such file or directory...

The current setup works just fine with UUCP access but I'm not sure
why it won't work with FTP.

Is there something that I need to configure in ftpaccess so that it
can see directories outside of the ftp directory area?

I thought of moving the location of the FTP directories to be on top
of the BBS directories but can see some real problems there with
permissions and there is a lot in that area that I don't want viewable
at all.

The ultimate goal is to have all the disability file directories
available to the BBS, UUCP and FTP with only the BBS being able to 
add new files to those specific areas and UUCP and FTP able to add
files to respective upload directories to be moved later.

In case it matters...

	SCO Unix 3.2v4.2
	TCP 1.2.1o
	Development system but NO TCP Dev System

Any suggestions....

I have BTW looked at O'Reilly's Managing Internet Information Systems
which is a great book...but don't really see the answer there either.

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Kevin W. Reed (kreed)          TELESYS DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS (TNET.COM) |
| [email-masked]                     2359 W De Palma Ave, Mesa AZ 85202 |
| System Administrator / Unix BBS Developer  BBS/UUCP/DATA 602-649-9099 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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From: [email-masked] (Harald Milz)
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 07:52:04 +0100 (MET DST)

Subject: Re: Accessing directories outside of the ftp structure?
To: [email-masked]
Organization: Harry's Box

> and away we go....  But it doesn't work.

It can't work in an anonymous FTP setup because ftpd does a chroot(2)
before it grants access to the ftp directories. Symbolic links thus 
can't work that way. I don't know SCO but if you can setup a loopback
mount, you can try to 

	mount <mount-type> /bbs/bbsfiles/DIME /usr/local/ftp/pub/DIME

The latter must exist before. Loopback mounts exist under various Unixes,
such as SunOS and AIX. Your mileage may vary. 

As an alternative, you can set it up the other way round: the files
are located under /usr/local/ftp/pub/DIME, and /bbs/bbsfiles/DIME is
a symbolic link to /usr/local/ftp/pub/DIME. 

> can see directories outside of the ftp directory area?

No way. 

> which is a great book...but don't really see the answer there either.

See the chroot(2) man page. BTW all this is mentioned in your system's 
ftpd man page. If not, SCO is to be badly blamed. 

Ciao,
hm