Looking further, I found that when I try to log into the laptop > as anonymous, I get a 530-Unable to set anonymous privileges error, and > in /var/log/messages, I see: ftp: Directory /usr/portage/ is not > accessible. > > Have you tried su'ing to the ftp user to make sure you can still get to /usr/portage via a shell?
Tried running strace against the ftpd? BTW - http replicator works well for distfiles. It might just be easier to use that. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BpP7JqMShS0J:www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_Download_Cache_for_LAN-Http-Replicator+http+replicator+gentoo&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au
