Problem with symbolic links in FTP client

Solution 1:

A symbolic link is a pointer to the "right" file. But if that original file is outside the jail then you can't access it. This is the goal of a jail. Otherwise a normal user could create a symbolic link in the jail to /etc/passwd and just read it. What a security risk!

So jailed is jailed. Probably a hard link will do the job, as this is a "copy without duplicating the used size". And for the FTP server it is like a normal file (with all the problems).

Solution 2:

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.

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....

Taken from here:

Setup symbolic link where users can access it with FTP