Problems with vsftpd and SELinux

My latest IT misadventure had me set up a virtual FTP host which used virtual FTP user accounts using the vsftpd FTP daemon that is included with both Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as Fedora Core 4. vsftpd, of course, needs no introduction when it comes to discussions about secure and stable FTP daemons.

The problem I had was that even after I set up the virtual host and virtual user successfully, I could not upload files, nor could I create directories, even though the user account to which I had mapped the virtual users had permissions to perform such actions. I thought this was a problem with the configuration file I was using for the virtual host but then I logged back into the "standard" FTP site that I was running alongside the virtual one, and I could not upload files or create directories there either.

Detailed Symptoms

1. Each time I tried to upload a file, I would get a 553 Could not create file. error.
2. The error was not a 550 Permission Denied error.
3. If I enabled the xferlog_enable=YES option, the log would still show that the upload succeeded with no mention of the 553 error.

Enter SELinux

After spending hours researching, I found that enabling SELinux when I had installed Fedora Core 4 on my system was the culprit. Credit for the content of this page goes to Ji He.

Solving the Problem

I found that the most convenient way to solve this problem, aside from either disabling SELinux or not installing it in the first place, was to do the following:

1. Log in as root.
2. Open the file /etc/selinux/targeted/booleans.local in a text editor.
3. Append the line ftpd_disable_trans=1 to the bottom of the file.
4. Save the file and quit the text editor.
5. Reboot the computer.

Upon reboot, both of the FTP sites hosted on my system allowed for me to upload files, delete files, create directories and delete directories.

Disclaimer

If the file /etc/selinux/targeted/booleans.local doesn't exist on your system, it may be because SELinux is not installed. In this situation, the cause of the problem may be a permissions issue or a misconfigured vsftpd.