vsftpd - ftpuser cannot upload files to server

Question

I'm developing a website in Netbeans where I configured FTP to upload files to my server. On the server - Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - I created a user called "ftpuser" specifically for this task. I installed vsFTPd to handle file uploads. Its config is blow:

listen=YES
anonymous_enable=NO
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
file_open_mode=0644
local_umask=022
dirmessage_enable
use_localtime=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
allow_writeable_chroot=YES
chroot_local_user=YES
secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd/empty
pam_service_name=vsftpd
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
rsa_private_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

The starting directory of ftpuser is /var/www:

ftpuser:x:1005:1007:ftp user,,,:/var/www:/bin/bash

Everytime I try to upload a file, Netbeans says "Error, file NOT sent: file.php" and packet inspection with wireshark returns me these errors:

226 - Transfer done (but failed to open directory)
553 - Could not create file. 

Even with just doing ftp with the PUT operation gives me Error 553. The FTP user has no trouble logging in and changing directory.

The directory and all its subdirectories and files have the permissions set to 755 (777 - local_umask).

Is there something I'm missing? It used to work perfectly and I can't remember changing anything in Netbeans or vsFTPd.

UPDATES

The owner of the directory (and subdirectories / files) is set to:

drwxr-xr-x  6 marijn marijn 4096 Sep  1 14:21 noc

Even chowning this to ftpuser:ftpuser does not do anything.

Answer 1

It's an easy thing to overlook, but check if the ports that vsftpd has configured are open on your firewall.

I had similar problems where my connection to the ftp server would go through fine, but I couldn't get directory listings for the folder. I spent 6 hours searching aimlessly for a solution, but this fixed my problem.

Check your conf file for the specified ports:

vi /etc/vsftpd.conf

You're looking for these 2 lines:

pasv_max_port=12100
pasv_min_port=12000

In this case, I would open ports 12000-12100 for passive mode transfer:

ufw allow  12000:12100 /tcp

HTH

Answer 2

Fortunately I had a working configuration on my development server. Sometimes I need to upload some changes directly into the live server and I somehow configured vsftpd.conf differently. Also the FTP configurations in Netbeans were different.

This is what my vsftpd.conf looks like now: (notice the absence of chroot)

listen=YES
anonymous_enable=NO
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
local_umask=022
dirmessage_enable=YES
use_localtime=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd/empty
pam_service_name=vsftpd
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
rsa_private_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

The starting directory in Netbeans was set to:

/var/www/noc

Answer 3

According to your details, I would say that your user has no permission to write in the directory that you're trying to upload to.
The owner/group is marijn. But only the user can write to the directory, group and other users can only read and enter the dir.

Your user is ftpuser.
So either you add ftpuser to marijn group, and give the right to the group marijn to /var/www/noc and subdirs : chmod -R g+w /var/www/noc or you have to make ftpuser the owner of the dir where you want to write.