It means that the user which connects to the vsFTPd server should not be allowed to write in its root directory.
vsftpd-2.3.5 disallow login with writable root directory because of possible glibc vulnerabilities
If you already have enabled the TSL connection then the same error message will look like this:
“Unsupported record version Unknown-48.48”
Here is the solution for Wheezy. It is an extract of this great post. Thanks.
http://blog.waja.info/2013/05/13/500-oops-vsftpd-refusing-to-run-with-writable-root-inside-chroot/
The Frontier Group created a patched package of vsftpd for Ubuntu. After reviewing the patch we decided to also create a Debian package for wheezy.
You can easily install the package by the following sniplet:
echo "deb http://ftp.cyconet.org/debian wheezy-updates main non-free contrib" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wheezy-updates.cyconet.list
aptitude update; aptitude install -t wheezy-updates debian-cyconet-archive-keyring vsftpd
This will install a patched version of vsFTPd for Wheezy which allows to add the following configuration in /etc/vsftpd.conf:
echo "allow_writeable_chroot=YES" >> /etc/vsftpd.conf
List of possible solutions posted at:
Fixing 500 OOPS: vsftpd: refusing to run with writable root inside chroot ()
You can choose one of 3 ways:
1. Define option local_root= in configuration file. must by /home or other path to directory with users folders. In this way vsftpd chrooting to /home directory.
2. Define option passwd_chroot_enable=yes in configuration file and change in /etc/passwd file user home directory from «/home/user» to «/home/./user» (w/o quotes).
In this way vsftpd chrooting to /home directory.
3. Download sources of vsftpd-ext, compile and overwrite exist vsftpd binaries or take it from repositories and add to configuration file option allow_writeable_root=yes.