A user could not show the public_html directory on a cpanel server. Run the following to see how many files are listed in the directory.

cd /home/username
ls|wc -l
10050

This folder has 10500 files. The settings for ftp do not allow a full directory listing. We removed the files that were not needed and ftp worked.

Also this is a setting in /etc/pure-ftpd.conf

nano /etc/pure-ftpd.conf
# 'ls' recursion limits. The first argument is the maximum number of
# files to be displayed. The second one is the max subdirectories depth

LimitRecursion 10000 8

To change this – change the line amount in the first number and restart ftp

LimitRecursion 11000 8
service pure-ftpd restart

To change the ftp maximum number of files on plesk.

nano /etc/proftpd.conf
ListOptions -a maxfiles 2000 maxdepth 3

Restart xinetd

 service xinetd restart

This configures the -a option by default, and limits the maximum files in the generated listing to 2000. If the client uses the -R option, proftpd will not recurse into directories more than 3 levels deep when generating the listing.