Parallels plesk permissions accessing through FTP
Our server is running under CentOS 6 and handled over Panel Plesk 10.4.4. Structure of folders and files is created using php script. Then, when accessing through FTP we are unable to modify these folder contents previously created. When accessing it over Apache web user works without exception but not over ftp. Folders and files have 755 and 644 rights respectively. How to enable ftp acces? Thank you
EDIT: problem is that file owner and ftp are not the same but I do not know exactly how and where to attach it. File and folders owner is psacln (gid 502) and group is apache (gid 503). Ftp users are not the same.
We add a login ftp user (also system one) to the group owner of files and folders "psacln" using usermod -a -G psacln ftpusername. Same procedure with apache group but problem persists.
Answer
The problem here would be that you probably run your site in mod_php mode. In this mode scripts are operated under Apache privileges, so all files and directories created are owned by Apache. This way the files cannot be accessed by your FTP user unless you set up 777 or 666 permissions.
I think your options could be
switch to FastCGI mode of PHP. Depending on your Plesk account privileges, you can either do it yourself in Plesk UI or will have to ask hosting provider for that. This way your script will be operated under user privileges (same as FTP user) and there will be no problems with accessing these files through FTP. Also this option is often considered more secure.
make PHP script setting 777 permissions on your folders and 666 permissions on your files. It means you allow to modify them by everyone (so called "others"). So FTP user can modify these files as well. While this may sound insecure, but practically these files are already can be accessed from any other site on that system (if it is shared hosting server). So I don't think it will be any more insecure than the current status.
Regards