Sub FTP accounts - home directory overwrite?

[sparek-3]

Anybody noticing where some (not all) sub FTP virtual users are having their home directory reset?

I don't have a ton of information regarding this - I just noticed it this morning. I suppose it could be something specific to me, but it seems to be happening on all of our servers.

Some users - but not all, which is really weird - appear to have their home directory reset.

For example, an entry in /etc/proftpd/%user% might have:

[email protected]:%hash%:%uid%:%gid%:%user%:/home/%user%/[email protected]:/bin/ftpsh

Which I believe should be:

[email protected]:%hash%:%uid%:%gid%:%user%:/home/%user%/subuser1:/bin/ftpsh

Something appears to be resetting the home directory for this FTP sub user from /home/%user%/subuser1 to /home/%user%/[email protected]

I really can't be certain that the home directories are set wrong... but this seems to be prevalent on multiple servers - so that kind of tells me that something is changing the home directories and I don't think it's the end users.

To see if you have any FTP sub users that have their home directory set to a directory containing an @ symbol use:

cat /etc/proftpd/* | awk -F ":" '{print $6}' | grep @

(Although this doesn't necessarily mean those users are wrong... they may have intentionally set their home directory to use an @ symbol)

This is on cPanel 11.78.0.24

 

[cPanelMichael]

For example, an entry in /etc/proftpd/%user% might have:

[email protected]:%hash%:%uid%:%gid%:%user%:/home/%user%/[email protected]:/bin/ftpsh

Which I believe should be:

[email protected]:%hash%:%uid%:%gid%:%user%:/home/%user%/subuser1:/bin/ftpsh

Hello @sparek-3,

I've performed a number of tests (e.g. suspending accounts, changing passwords, creating new FTP users, switching between ProFTPd/PureFTPd, enabling/disabling shell access, forcing cPanel updates) on test servers running cPanel & WHM versions 78 and 80. However, I was unable to reproduce the reported behavior (the document root value for the virtual FTP accounts did not change).

We're happy to take a look at one of the affected systems via a support ticket to see if there's anything we're missing in the testing environment that explains the cause of the issue. Post the ticket number here if you open one and we'll update this thread with the outcome.

Thank you.

 

[sparek-3]

Thanks for looking into this.

I really haven't had anyone else complain about this, and I've kind of gotten busy in some other work. I'll see if I can revisit this at some point.

It's just weird that it seems to be happening on a lot of different servers - but maybe it's been going on for some time and people just haven't noticed? Maybe it's not something recent. Just really weird.

I'll see what else I can dig up on this when I get around to it.