FIZZICIST I have to qualify everything here by saying that I'm new to FTP. I spent one entire day messing around with it on my LAN trying to get it to work, with only partial success. Part of the problem is my ignorance about what I'm doing, and the rest of it is PureFTPd Manager's lack of clear and thorough documentation of its ample features. Yes, ample features. I've learned enough about FTP to know that PureFTPd Manager is a godsend to anyone who doesn't want to mess around with command line stuff to configure Apple's built-in FTP server. If you know what you're doing, I suspect that PureFTPd Manager is a great solution. My problem is that I don't know what I'm doing (yet). PureFTPd Manager enabled me to set up and configure an FTP server, create virtual users, and successfully connect to the FTP server from another Mac on my LAN as a virtual user, but I could not view the target directory. PureFTPd Manager's server log confirmed that I had successfully connected as the virtual user, but in each case the FTP client could not fetch the directory list. I tried it with numerous FTP clients, all with the same result. The client shows that it's trying to list the "/" directory, not the actual "/Users/ftp/VirtualUsers/virtual user directory I've specified. As far as I can tell, the FTP server seems to be trying to get the FTP client to load a root user directory that doesn't exist. The problem appears to be related to the PASV mode, which is automatically invoked because I'm using Panther's built-in software firewall on the FTP server host. I've checked several user forums for various FTP client apps, and the failure to list the target directory appears to be a fairly common problem. So far, I haven't found any solutions. I'm convinced that the solution lies in the way the FTP server host is configured. Anyhow, the point here is that PureFTPd Manager provides no documentation that mentions this problem or explains how to correct it. It also provides little information about many of its other features, like the User ID and Group ID name and ID number options, nor does the documentation provide any explanation or examples of the kinds of entries needed to complete the textbox entries in the Transfers tab of the User Manager. PureFTPd Manager's interface is nice, and considering the bewildering (to a newbie) array of features it provides, the developer has done a magnificent job of taking the control of Mac OS X's native FTP server functionality into an intelligible GUI format. For someone who already is knowledgeable (at least, more so than I am) with FTP, you probably can't find better freeware. To be fair, I have not tried contacting the developer, so I can't comment on his responsiveness. I'm giving PureFTPd Manager an overall rating of 4 because I think it's a good start, and based on the other comments I've read about it here and elsewhere, it's a great application for people who already know what they're doing.
(Version 1.6.3) | 
