The FTP server does not write trace or log messages to the SYSLOGD facility for certain users.

Upon logging onto the FTP server, a new address space is spawned under the client's userid. Any trace or logging messages generated for this client session will by written to the SYSLOGD application using a syslog() function call. However, one aspect of this function call is that the text will first be written to /dev/null to determine the size of the message. If the client's userid does not have access to this file, then the messages will not be written to the SYSLOG. Users with UID=0, however, are considered superusers and as such will have access to every file, regardless of the file's permissions. This is why the problem does not occur for UID=0 users.

Ensure that /dev/null has write access for all users. Use the following command to check the permissions for /dev/null:

 ls -l /dev/null

This will produce output similar to the following:

 crwxrwxrwx   1 USER   GROUP       4,  0 Jan 28  2001 /dev/null

  

For each user to have write access, the w bit must be turned on for each octet: crwxrwxrwx. Issue the the following USS command to alter the permissions:

 chmod 777 /dev/null