Subject: ls once worked, now no dice

From: John-Paul Pagano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 13:24:07 -0500

This is strange behavior.  I set up wu-ftpd to handle a number of "real"
users, each of which is chrooted in the password file to be jailed in his
own home directory.  I read reams of documentation before setting this up
that stated that I had to set up a proper chroot environment for these
users, in that I needed a statically linked build of ls, among other
things, for their limited environments to be usable. 

So, I was planning to do that, but after I set up the initial installation
of wu-ftpd, I found that users were in fact able to log in and see the
files in their home directories without even a dynamically linked ls in
their home dirs, let alone a statically linked version.  I found this odd,
but assumed that perhaps the documentation out there wasn't current with
the latest version of wu-ftpd, which seemed to have some very intelligent
facility for managing chrooted environments without my having to build
static bins and other things for the users to use.

Now, however, I suddenly find that users can no longer see anything in
their home directories.  Not only does ls not work, but the dir command
seems to be unavailable.  What can have caused this change?  I have done
nothing to the server since the last time it worked; I haven't even
restarted it.  Should I just go ahead and build the static ls for each
user, or is there some actual reason why file access should have been
possible without doing so, some config state I can revert to in order to
save the trouble of building the static ls?

Thanks.

--
John-Paul Pagano
Unix Systems Administrator
Voice: (212) 208-0828
Fax: (212) 825-1040