Pure-FTPd might not be the best FTP server but it is my most favorite one since yesterday. Its advantages are as belows.

• Easy
• Simple
• Fast
• Secure

It is enough for me right now. In addition, it is available on most distributions including Ubuntu. Unfortunately, it seems Pure-FTPd is too secure in term of compile-time options. The binary package of Pure-FTPd on Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy doesn’t support large file operation. As a result, I can’t see or transfer files larger than 2 GB. Oh, my god! Then I managed to rebuild the package again locally to support large file. Below are my instructions. Note that I am just a newbie for Ubuntu, Debian-style package management. This is a good practice for me.

1. Become non-root user

   cd ~
   mkdir pure-ftpd
   cd pure-ftpd

2. Obtain sources

   apt-get source pure-ftpd

3. Install devscripts

   apt-get install devscripts

4. Install all build dependencies

   apt-get build-dep pure-ftpd

5. Modify build rules in pure-ftpd-1.0.19/debian/rules using below patch

   --- pure-ftpd-1.0.19/debian/rules.orig  2006-02-21 13:53:49.000000000 +0700
   +++ pure-ftpd-1.0.19/debian/rules       2006-02-20 20:50:14.000000000 +0700
   @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
    export DH_COMPAT=3
    
    cfgflags=--prefix=/usr --mandir=’$${prefix}’/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc/pure-ftpd CFLAGS=-DMAX_USER_LENGTH=128U
   -optflags=--with-everything --with-pam --with-privsep --with-tls
   +optflags=--with-everything --with-pam --with-privsep --with-tls --with-largefile
    bin=pure-pw pure-statsdecode pure-pwconvert
    sbin=pure-authd pure-ftpwho pure-uploadscript pure-quotacheck pure-ftpd pure-mrtginfo

6. Build

   debuild -us -uc

Now you can install the result packages as usual using dpkg command as follow.

cd ..
dpkg -i pure-ftpd_1.0.19-4_i386.deb pure-ftpd-common_1.0.19-4_all.deb

Now you are ready to go! It supports large file operation now.

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