Include directive broken when using wildcards for directory components

[SlowFox71]

What I Did

My configuration used the following include statement:

Include /var/www/*/custom/config/proftpd.conf

The included configuration files contain <VirtualHost> clauses, but the virutal hosts are not available. Log file shows nothing at initialization and Unknown host '$FOO.domain.example' requested on $IP#21, refusing HOST command upon connection attempts to $FOO.

What I Expected/Wanted

Virtual hosts should be available, i.e. config files should be included.

How to fix it

Please be kind, I am not a developer. It took me a couple of hours to nail this down, but finally I can say that the problem is in src/parser.c parse_wildcard_config_path(). Lines 1032ff concatenate parent paths up to the first wildcard:

    if (parent_path != NULL) {
      parent_path = pdircat(tmp_pool, parent_path,
        pstrndup(tmp_pool, component, component_len), NULL);

    } else {
      parent_path = pstrndup(tmp_pool, "/", 1);
    }

But they do so only if parent_path is initialized, which is not the case at the first iteration. Thus the first component is silently dropped and config files are searched (but not found) in www/*/custom/config/proftpd.conf instead. Adding a leading dummy path component serves as a workaround for the problem - seems like nobody ever has tried such a configuration.

I'd suggest dropping lines 1021-1023 and 1036-1038 (initializing parent_path) and instead do the initialization at line 1014 (before checking for wildcards); however I am not sure if this might result in unwanted behavior for other inputs as I am not at all familiar with the bigger picture of this logic.

ProFTPD Version and Configuration

Originally 1.3.7a, but the bug is reproducible in the master branch as well.

During debugging I reduced my configuration to the single include line stated above. This should be sufficient to reproduce the problem.

[Castaglia]

In your configuration using:

Include /var/www/*/custom/config/proftpd.conf

What is the actual path to the config file that be being included (and isn't)? This will help me locally reproduce this behavior.

[Castaglia]

Never mind; I was able to reproduce the behavior locally; I should have a fix up shortly.

[Castaglia]

This should now be fixed in master. Thanks!