Hi Mike, Tony and Surley Turns out that debian itself bars ftp root access by default It wasn't the ftp server vsftpd that was doing it I needed to comment out root in /etc/ftpusers # /etc/ftpusers: list of users disallowed FTP access. See ftpusers(5). #root daemon bin sys sync games man lp mail news uucp nobody Worked straight away :-) Simon