ProFTPd Virtual FTP feature should be disabled by default

Hey Jamie,

The Virtual FTP feature mostly just confuses people. While I guess it should stick around as an option for the tiny (approaching 0) percentage of people who actually need it, it should be hidden from all the common forms by default. I think just disabling it in the Features and Plugins page achieves this goal. So, can this option be disabled by default?

Is anything else needed to make the option disappear from all of the common forms?

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Yeah, the number of people using this feature (anonymous FTP) is pretty low.

I will disable it by default in new installs.

Oh wait, it is ALREADY disabled by default on new installs. The only way users will see this option for new domains is if they enable it on the Features and Plugins page.

unborn's picture
Submitted by unborn on Fri, 03/24/2017 - 04:32 Pro Licensee

1+ for this

Joe's picture
Submitted by Joe on Sun, 03/26/2017 - 02:37 Pro Licensee

Huh...weird. I've recently seen a couple of folks asking about it, and it's enabled on some of our servers (installed in the past year or so). I guess the change is recent? I know I've complained about it a few times over the years...I guess it got changed sometime between when the folks confused about it and now.

Or, i wonder if they turned it on. In one case (on the Webmin mailing list) the user was sure it was going to disable FTP entirely to turn this option off. This damned feature has been confusing people since the first month of Virtualmin's existence, and twelve years later, it's still doing it, even though I'm pretty sure we changed the wording of it at some point to try to prevent confusion. ;-)

unborn's picture
Submitted by unborn on Sun, 03/26/2017 - 04:38 Pro Licensee

@joe

perhaps it could be installed aka virtualmin module - you know in webmin unused modules, when user click there it will offer him to setup and install..not sure, if that would be smart move or even perhaps possible from configuration steps, perhaps leave it as it is but there should be some documentation which greatly would explain the user what ftp is etc, I know they can google it but, you know people.

I stopped using ftp about 3 years ago when I learned some white hat 'skills'. This also greatly reduced attacks on server. I agree with confusion, also seen users who did not understand that sftp = ssh != ftp and so on.