If you run a firewall on your Linux server and want to use passive FTP connections, you have to define the passive port range in pure-ftpd and your firewall to ensure that the connections don't get blocked. The following example is for pure-ftpd on Debian or Ubuntu Linux and ISPConfig 3.
Set Passive Port Range in PureFTPD
1) Configure pure-ftpd
echo "40110 40210" > /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/PassivePortRange service pure-ftpd-mysql restart
2) Configure the firewall. If you use ISPConfig 3 on my server to configure the bastille firewall, you can add the nescessera port range in the ISPConfig firewall settings.
Change the list of Open TCP ports from:
20,21,22,25,53,80,110,143,443,3306,8080,10000
to:
20,21,22,25,53,80,110,143,443,3306,8080,10000,40110:40210
and then click on "Save".
Set Passive IP in PureFTPD
Setting a passive IP in FTP might be necessary when your server is located behind a NAT router. You will get an error like "Error: Server returned unroutable private IP address in PASV reply" from your FTP client in such a case.
To set a passive IP address, run this command:
echo "1.2.3.4" > /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/ForcePassiveIP
Replace 1.2.3.4 with the External IP address that clients shall use to connect to the FTP server. Then restart pureFTPD:
service pure-ftpd-mysql restart
