TOPIC: VSFTPD
Turning off seccomp sandbox in vsftpd
21st September 2013Within the last week, I set up a virtual web server using Arch Linux to satisfy my own curiosity, since the DIY nature of Arch means that you can build up exactly what you need without having any real constraints put upon you. Something that didn't surprise me about this was that it took me more work than the virtual server that I created using Ubuntu Server, yet I didn't expect Proftpd to be missing from the main repositories. Though the package can be found in the AUR, I didn't fancy the prospect of dragging more work on myself, so I went with vsftpd (Very Secure FTP Daemon) instead. In contrast to Proftpd, this is available in the standard repositories and there is a guide to its use in the Arch user documentation.
However, while vsftpd worked well just after installation, connections to the virtual FTP soon failed with FileZilla began issuing uninformative messages. In fact, it was the standard command line FTP client on my Ubuntu machine that was more revealing. It issued the following message that let me to the cause after my engaging the services of Google:
500 OOPS: priv_sock_get_cmd
With version 3.0 of vsftpd, a new feature was introduced, and it appears that this has caused problems for a few people. That feature is seccomp_sandbox and it can be turned off by adding the following line in /etc/vsftpd.conf:
seccomp_sandbox=NO
That solved my problem, and version 3.0.2 of vsftpd should address the issue with seccomp sandboxing anyway. In case, this solution isn't as robust as it should be because seccomp is not supported in the Linux kernel that you are using, turning off the new feature still needs to be an option, though.