Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 07/15/2007
This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota and upload/download bandwidth limits with this setup. Passwords will be stored encrypted as MD5 strings in the database.
For the administration of the MySQL database you can use web based tools like phpMyAdmin which will also be installed in this howto. phpMyAdmin is a comfortable graphical interface which means you do not have to mess around with the command line.
This tutorial is based on CentOS 5.0. You should already have set up a basic CentOS 5.0 system, for example as described in the first four chapters of this tutorial: http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_centos5.0
This howto is meant as a practical guide; it does not cover the theoretical backgrounds. They are treated in a lot of other documents in the web.