VSFTPD and Samba - they just won't 'play ball'

[Gabriel Dragffy]

Good evening all.

Been a while since I posted on this list, the last time I did I got  
some great help with user administration on a Dapper server I've  
setup at work.

Essentially I have set up a Dapper server, running apache2 with php5,  
mysql. It is also a subversion repository. Dapper is working  
absolutely fantastically, even thought the hardware is naff (256mb  
ram, 20gb hdd, 1ghz).

Anyway, I now need to expand it's capabilities to include being an  
FTP server. The deal is that we have a G5 at work with 500gb of  
storage. We want to make a lot of it available to our clients, FTP is  
the answer. However, due to the large size of all these files, and  
the small size of the dapper server's hard drive, copying over the  
files is out of the question.

On the G5 I set up windows sharing, and using CIFS have mounted the  
directory on the dapper server under /media/ftpshare. It works really  
well, I can use the files as if they were actually stored on the  
server. I took it to the next stage and setup VSFTPD to allow anon  
access to it. It does this, when one browses via FTP the files are  
listed as expected, however none can be downloaded.

An error keeps occurring "Failure writing network stream".

There is a folder there called "incoming" that allows anon upload,  
and uploading files works flawlessly.

The problem is not with permissions, I am sure. On the G5 I set the  
folder recursively to allow all users to read/write. And checked that  
it was mounted ok on the server. What's more is that I allowed  
apache2 to access the mount, and files could be browsed and  
downloaded perfectly via apache's directory listing. This leads me to  
believe it is something going on in VSFTPD. I'd really appreciate  
some help on this...

Many thanks.

Gabriel