Well, I didn't buy into this wholesale approach to getting things to work. Besides, I want a secure system and if SELinux is going to help me in the long run, I want it enabled.
VSFTPD, or Very Secure FTP Daemon, is a pretty standard FTP server. You can install it on CentOS systems (or RHEL, for that matter) by running "yum install vsftpd" from the command line. Once you get it installed you can make changes to the configuration file at "/etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf" using a file editor. Also, to make sure it is always running in the background run "chkconfig vsftpd on" and "service vsftpd restart" from the command line.
Make sure the configuration file is set up properly. Only give FTP access to a limited number of users (never include root), disable anonymous access and make sure users can only access the files they need (I recommend chroot-ing them).
This is only half the battle. Now that VSFTPD is running, how do you allow users to access their home directories? SELinux usually will get in the way of this. Well, there is a SELinux setting for this called "ftp_home_dir" and this will allow users to access their home directory via FTP. To set this, from the command line run
setsebool -P ftp_home_dir 1
Be sure to also check file permissions and file ownership, if you run into problems. A file must be writable for everyone if they do not specifically own it.
If this fails to grant you FTP access where you need it, or your set-up is slightly different, you can always allow the FTP daemon full access to all files by running
setsebool -P allow_ftpd_full_access 1
This is granting a bit more power to the FTP daemon than is necessary, but it is much better than just disabling SELinux all-together.
By the way, here is a great intro to CentOS & SELinux.
