FAQforge

The pure-ftpd package that comes with Debian 5.0 (Lenny) does not start in a OpenVZ virtual machine as it is compiled with “capabilities”. This tutorial describes the steps to build a pure-ftpd Debian package with capabilities disabled:

Make a temporary directory

mkdir /usr/src/pure-ftpd
cd /usr/src/pure-ftpd

Download the source package for pure-ftpd

apt-get source pure-ftpd
apt-get build-dep pure-ftpd

Edit the rules file and add the switch “–without-capabilities”

cd pure-ftpd-1.0.21/debian
nano rules

Change the line:

optflags=–with-everything –with-largefile –with-pam –with-privsep –with-tls

to (one Line!):

optflags=–with-everything –with-largefile –with-pam –with-privsep –with-tls –without-capabilities

Build the Debian (.deb) package

cd ..
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -b

and install it

cd ..
dpkg -i pure-ftpd-common_1.0.21-11.4_all.deb pure-ftpd-mysql_1.0.21-11.4_i386.deb
/etc/init.d/pure-ftpd-mysql restart

To prevent that apt overwrites these manually compiled packages with the default packages from the Debian repositorys, execute these commands:

echo ‘pure-ftpd-common hold’ | dpkg –set-selections
echo ‘pure-ftpd-mysql hold’ | dpkg –set-selections

This tutorial is based on the german tutorial from planet_fox

1. Flo says:

   June 16, 2010 at 8:22 pm

   Thank you so much! Worked perfect!!!
   For me i had to add source and update sys. Than it worked.
   nano /etc/apt/sources.list
   added:
   deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free
   deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main
   apt-get upgrade && apt-get update…

   But after that you can not use apt-get update to update pureftpd, the packages are keept back.

   Reply
2. Brooks Swinnerton says:

   December 2, 2010 at 6:41 pm

   How would we go about updating Pureftpd after we’ve done this?

   Reply
3. vunte says:

   February 16, 2011 at 1:10 pm

   It didn’t solved my problem. I’ve removed the packages firstly and reinstalling the packages give me the error
   Setting up pure-ftpd-mysql (1.0.28-2) …
   update-rc.d: warning: pure-ftpd-mysql stop runlevel arguments (1) do not match LSB Default-Stop values (0 1 6)
   Starting ftp server: Running: /usr/sbin/pure-ftpd-mysql-virtualchroot -l mysql:/etc/pure-ftpd/db/mysql.conf -l pam -Y 1 -u 1000 -A -b -D -O clf:/var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log -8 UTF-8 -H -B
   invoke-rc.d: initscript pure-ftpd-mysql, action “start” failed.
   dpkg: error processing pure-ftpd-mysql (–configure):
   subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 252
   Errors were encountered while processing:
   pure-ftpd-mysql
   E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
   E: Failed to process build dependencies
   ??
   any help will be great

   Reply
4. GospoD says:

   March 2, 2011 at 12:04 am

   root@vps:/usr/src/pure-ftpd# dpkg -i pure-ftpd-common_1.0.21-11.4_all.deb pure-ftpd-mysql_1.0.21-11.4_i386.deb
   dpkg: warning: downgrading pure-ftpd-common from 1.0.24-1 to 1.0.21-11.4.
   (Reading database … 36424 files and directories currently installed.)
   Preparing to replace pure-ftpd-common 1.0.24-1 (using pure-ftpd-common_1.0.21-11.4_all.deb) …
   Unpacking replacement pure-ftpd-common …
   Selecting previously deselected package pure-ftpd-mysql.
   Unpacking pure-ftpd-mysql (from pure-ftpd-mysql_1.0.21-11.4_i386.deb) …
   Setting up pure-ftpd-common (1.0.21-11.4) …
   Installing new version of config file /etc/pam.d/pure-ftpd …
   Processing triggers for man-db …
   Setting up pure-ftpd-mysql (1.0.21-11.4) …
   Starting ftp server: /usr/sbin/pure-ftpd-wrapper: Invalid configuration file /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/FSCharset: No corresponding directive
   invoke-rc.d: initscript pure-ftpd-mysql, action “start” failed.
   dpkg: error processing pure-ftpd-mysql (–install):
   subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255
   Errors were encountered while processing:
   pure-ftpd-mysql

   Any help?

   Reply