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Maybe you missed the OpenSSH 4.9 release? http://www.openssh.com/txt/release-4.9

Since then, it is easy to setup a chroot'ed account which easily acts like an ftp server. Have a look at ChrootDirectory and the internal-sftp subsystem.

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No, in fact I update every 6 months ever since I started using OpenBSD back in 1999. The problem isn't setting up OpenSSH to offer chrooted sftp access. My gripe is that the sftp subsystem for no solid reason requires that a user directory is root-owned in order to chroot even when the user account experiences a forced sftp response (that is, denying shell access, making it an sftp-only account).

the reason the directory must be root owned, is that the chroot directive is also used for normal ssh sessions, where a user owned chroot directory can mean that a user can break out.

Yeah I'm aware of that part. I submitted a number of design suggestions, as well as a patch, to the OBSD devs which disregarded the root ownership check if the SFTP subsystem was called by a connecting client, but no one bothered even discussing the topic. The whole /home/user/user/ directory nesting just rubs me the wrong way.

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