Partition the server for FTP access

[JamesMA]

Hello all – I really hope someone can help me?

We have a Virtual Server courtesy of our ISP and it operates with Plesk 9.5.4.

When this was first set up, my colleague who is now longer here, dealt with this. He organised for the server to be 'partitioned' to allow a particular client straight-forward FTP access (via Transmit or other FTP client), with their own login name and password etc., to upload and download large files rather then try to email them. I need this facility again but have no clue whatsoever how to go about setting this up.

I have spoken with our ISP but their answer was simply 'we don't offer support with this, it's up to you to maintain it yourself'. A little annoying as they are quick enough to take the £££s for the service! I have also spoken with Parallels support and although they were very nice the only thing could do was to email me a 350+ page manual which I can make head-nor-tail of.

I am just really hoping that someone on here would be kind enough to help. To me, this seems like such a simple task but I just can't find anyone with the knowledge who is prepared to help and I don't want to mess anything up.

I am a complete and utter novice at this with very VERY limited knowledge and experience so if you do reply please treat me as an 'idiot' and give me the info in a very basic format.

I would very much appreciate any help and/or advice that anyone out there could offer.

Many thanks in advance

James

 

[abdi]

In Plesk 9 you will need to create a domain name and in this process you create an FTP username and password that should give you FULL FTP access to the server to the designated directory (/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs)

Now, the other part is increasing the Upload timeout for the FTP server. The default plesk ftp server settings wont allow you to upload as much data as you want before it timeouts...so to do so, just follow these instructions:

Increase the timeouts (happens when a user is uploading many files, it tends to timeout)

 vim /etc/proftpd.conf

and add the following at the end of file just before [AuthGroupFile /etc/group] :

TimeoutStalled          600
TimeoutIdle             1200
TimeoutNoTransfer       900
TimeoutSession          3600
AllowStoreRestart       on
AllowRetrieveRestart    on
PassivePorts            1100 1600

Then we restart xinetd

/etc/init.d/xinetd restart

NB: PassivePorts 1100 1600
Sets the PassivePorts, you can remove it if you don't need it.