README.Windows

 ------------------------ WINDOWS PORT OF PURE-FTPD ------------------------
 
 
  Before all: Pure-FTPd was designed on Unix and for Unix. The Windows port
has been done because some people are forced to work on Win32 by their
pointy hairy boss. For these people, Apache is a nice alternative to IIS.
But when it comes to FTP servers, most of them are designed for warez
trading rather than being secure. And closed-source doesn't help.

  So a Windows port of Pure-FTPd makes sense. As long as Cygwin32 is able to
compile and run this piece of software without any change to the source
code, Win32 binaries will be provided. But don't expect any Windows-specific
change or optimization. Also, a great part of the server security relies on
Cygwin's libraries emulation functions. So Pure-FTPd on Win32 should be
considered experimental and unsupported. And some features may just not work.

  On the good side, initial testing showed that the server was immune to
common attacks other Windows FTP daemons were vulnerable to (directory
traversals, device opening, etc) .


       ------------------------ INSTALLATION ------------------------
       
       
  Copy the executable files (*.EXE) in a suitable directory. Also copy
CYGWIN1.DLL in that directory.

  Create a C:\CYGWIN directory (you can leave it empty, but the directory
should be there) .


    ------------------------ RUNNING THE SERVER ------------------------
    
    
  PURE-FTPD.EXE works like Unix's /usr/local/sbin/pure-ftpd program and all
command-line switches apply as well.

  A noticeable difference, though, is that users can't be stored in
/etc/passwd (or equivalent files) . All users have the same UID/GID. So
better chroot everyone.

  Users must be in a puredb database. PURE-PW.EXE can be used to create
virtual users. It you use it in the default configuration, you have to
create C:\CYGWIN\etc and C:\etc .

  Ray Jachrist says that Pure-FTPd can run as a service using Firedaemon:
http://www.firedaemon.com/ .

       ------------------------ SERVER FILES ------------------------


  All files managed by Pure-FTPd have their path relative to C:\CYGWIN .
  
  It means that starting the server with:
  
                    pure-ftpd -lpuredb:/etc/pureftpd.pdb
                    
  Will read:
  
                         C:\CYGWIN\etc\pureftpd.pdb
                         
  It also applies to log files and users directories.                         


       ------------------------ ANONYMOUS FTP ------------------------
       
       
  Files for anonymous FTP must be stored in a directory called:
  
                                C:\CYGWIN\FTP

  (of course you can use the -e switch to disable anonymous FTP) .

  Alternatively, you can have a FTP_ANON_DIR environment variable to
define the directory for public files.

  Virtual hosting is supported as well. Files must be in:
  
                          C:\CYGWIN\PURE-FTPD\<ip>\

  If you don't want anonymous users to upload files, use the -i switch.


  ------------------------ COMPILATION ENVIRONMENT ------------------------
  

  The Win32 version of Pure-FTPd has been configured with the following
command-line, using the Cygnus Win32 environment:

env CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium -pipe" LDFLAGS="-static -s" \
    ./configure --with-everything --with-brokenrealpath \
                --without-shadow  --with-nonroot --with-tls \
                --with-probe-random-dev --without-ascii
                
  All these switches (except --with-everything and --with-tls) are highly
recommended to compile Pure-FTPd on Windows.                

  Needed packages are: base, gcc (+ dependencies), make and the crypt
library. All of these can be installed with the standard Cygwin32
installer (http://www.cygwin.com/) .