[KLUG Members] FTP authentication solutions

[Benjamin Stuart]

Hello all-
   I'm doing some research into the various options available for authenticating FTP users.  What I envision is getting away from the idea of needing to have an account for every user (read: an entry in /etc/passwd) on the box.  Obviously this would reduce the amount of maintenance necessary to keep up a box with 1000+ users needing to get access via FTP.
   What I would ideally like to be able to do is have some sort of authentication mechanism that will allow the user to FTP into the box using their own login/password and have them stuck into their own directory.  Their directory, however, would actually be owned by a blanket user:group called "ftpusers" or whatever.
   I'm kinda deriving this plan from the idea of a Cyrus+SASL implementation (where it is not necessary for every POP3 user to have a full-blown account on the system).  A half hour spent on google has not led me to any FTP authentication services that use SASL.
   Does this make sense?  Am I looking in the right direction?  Anyone done anything like I am attempting to do?  Any advice would be much appreciated.  Thanks,

-Ben