I have a folder on a server where a client of mine has a bunch of folders that they upload images and what not for a site, I do a symbolic link to those folders to the root of the website. This way I can give them ftp access to upload whatever they need without having access to the root level of the website.
I have another folder that I can't setup as a symbolic link to their folder, which has images they need to upload to. I know that if I create a symbolic link the other way around where the sym link is in their folder, they can't access it through FTP.
There has to be a way without creating two separate FTP accounts and give a user the ability to upload to a different directory that is outside of their home directory. I see that it is ftp specific and that there are some settings that can be changed but I haven't seen any clear cut answers for the best way to handle this.
Best Answer
You can use the bind option of mount to remount the other folder so the FTP server sees the files as being within the root of the website.
I posted an answer to the same question on UbuntuForums.org.
...You could mount /home/shared/files/ under /home/website/files/ like this.
Create a mount point ( a directory ) in /home/website
mkdir /home/website/files/
Mount the other directory under this mount point
mount --bind /home/shared/files /home/website/files/
It will now appear that those files are actually under /home/website/ so will be available even if you restrict the user to this website root directory....