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