For a very long time, the FTP server bundled with Solaris has been based on the WU-FTPd program. In Solaris 11, this has been changed to ProFTPd.
In addition to being more current, easier to configure, and more flexible, ProFTPd has the advantage of being more secure. The ProFTPd team takes security very seriously; it has a mailing list, <[email protected]>
, dedicated to resolving any security issues in a timely manner.
The best practice for setting up anonymous FTP is to create a chroot
directory. In older FTP daemons, this required setting up a special directory with copies of standard libraries. Some people may have avoided doing so due do this complexity.
ProFTPd eliminates this requirement, thus encouraging better security practices.
In addition to improvements for anonymous FTP, ProFTPd gives the ability to force all users to be "chrooted" on login. This means that FTP users will not be able to change the directory (cd
) outside their home directory...