pwd in ftp gives 550

A new disk is just installed in my solaris 8 box. It works fine.

However, if I tried to ftp (in.ftpd) and then cd to all directories hosted in this new disk, it gives me 550 error msg. There is no problem for those in
my old disk at all.

ftp> pwd
550 .


I am sure I've granted enough permissions on file level, since I can do an ls, drop file in, and traverse down all the sub-directories.
And if i use telnet, there is no such problem.

I really have no idea what's going wrong, and my manger is grabbing my neck.

Would appreciate if any one can inspire me with any idea. Many Thanks!!

550: registered action not taken, file unavailable (not found, no access)
ftp needs a correct installed user.

For a true pwd to work, the user running the pwd must have read and execute permission in every subdirectory all the way to root. I'll bet that you don't.

When you telnet in, are you using the same uid as when you ftp in? In so, you probably using a shell with a built-in pwd that simply remembers where it thinks it is. Try running /usr/bin/pwd.

Solaris has a nasty bug here. The permissions on the mount point count. You can't see these permission once mount something on top of the mount point. You can unmount the filesystem, change the permissions on the mount point, and remount the filesystem.

As an alternative to unmounting, you can mount the filesystem containing the mountpoint as an NFS loopback. Recall that exporting and mounting a filesystem via NFS does not export other filesystems mounted on top on it. This will expose the mountpoint and let you change the permissions. I think it's roughly something like:
share -F nfs -o rw,root=localhost /
mkdir /realroot
mount -F nfs localhost:/ /realroot
chmod 755 /realroot/export2
But it's been a while since I've done that... If you go this route, please post the real procedure if I fumbled it. It always takes me a couple of tries to get this right.

Thanks Perderabo,
I have a new finding: pwd works only if I ftp login as root, but failed for normal users (ie. not belongs to group "other")

So it make me start thinking of the permission of mount point as you have mentioned.

However this is actually a disk partition instead of a nfs filesystem, is there also similar kind of permission control?

[/etc/vfstab]
/dev/dsk/c0t9d0s0 /dev/rdsk/c0t9d0s0 /export1 ufs 2 yes -

And, my /usr/bin/pwd can give correct result for all users in telnet. Permission of my /export1 is 775.

Reread my post. I know it's a local disk. Unmount /export1. There will still be a directory in / called /export1. That directory is called a mountpoint. You must change the permissions of that directory. You cannot see the permissions on that directory while /export1 is mounted.

The nfs trick is an exception to that. If you temporarily mount / as an nfs loopback, you can expose the mountpoint. This gives you a way to fix the mountpoint without unmounting /export1. If this is too hard to understand, forget about nfs. Then your only option is to unmount /export1, fix the permissions of /export1, and remount /export1.

And again, the need to do any of this is a SunOS bug.