Files in /var/ftp/etc directory.

[Daniel Bye]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 10:22:14AM -0400, Carmel NY wrote:
> This is probably a dumb question; however, since I don't know the
> answer I figured I might as well ask.
> 
> On a new installation of FreeBSD-7.2, I opted to set up an anonymous
> FTP server. I just noticed that there are three files in the '/etc'
> directory.
> 
> 1) ftpmold
> 2) group
> 3) pwd.db

They are to enable group and uid lookups when a logged in client issues,
for example, an ls command. Without them, clients will only see the 
numeric user and group ids. And is it really pwd.db? I would expect passwd, 
but I haven't run an anonymous ftp server for about a decade now... In 
either case, both files must be readable by everyone, or lookups would 
fail. Compare the files of the same name in your system's /etc - both 
have rw-r--r-- permissions, for the same reason - to commands invoked
by ordinary users to perform user name and group name lookups.

> 
> I know what the first one is, but what are the other two for? They are
> visible and down loadable to any visitor who accesses the site. Is this
> normal or is this something I should be concerned about? Can I just
> delete the two files I am unsure of?

-- 
Daniel Bye
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