From https://www.pureftpd.org/project/pure-ftpd/ :

However, this feature requires that the binary has been compiled with the --with-virtualchroot switch set.  Failure to do so will result in ftp clients experiencing errors like "550 Can't change directory to thefoldername: No such file or directory" when attempting to navigate symbolic link folders.

Unfortunately for me, who uses this feature in-house (each dev group has their own "project" share), office (the scanner uploads to a samba accessible folder), and production (customers each have their own "site" share), the Devuan/Debian package has not set this flag.

What follows are the steps I used to restore that feature capability to the Devuan pure-ftpd package.  Rebuilding .deb packages is old-hat for the Debian folks, so read no further.  But if you (like me) are escaping the RedHat/systemd fork-that-was-not-a-fork, and are much more acquainted with RPM than APT, maybe this helps.

echo "start with an updated system"
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

echo "you will need the devscripts tools"
apt-get install devscripts

echo "work within a folder apt can access"
cd /tmp/

echo "acquire the pure-ftp source and build dependencies"
apt-get source pure-ftpd
apt-get build-dep pure-ftpd

echo "set the virtualchroot flag"
cd pure-ftpd-1.0.47/
vi debian/rules
-- optflags=--with-everything --with-largefile --with-pam --with-privsep --with-tls --with-rfc2640
++ optflags=--with-everything --with-largefile --with-pam --with-privsep --with-tls --with-rfc2640 --with-virtualchroot

echo "supply a changelog comment and bump the revision number"
dch -n

echo "rebuild and install the package(s)"
debuild -us -uc
cd ..
apt-get install ./pure-ftpd_1.0.47-3.1_amd64.deb ./pure-ftpd-common_1.0.47-3.1_all.deb

echo "done"
cd

Hope I have that right ... feedback is welcome.  There was a bit of trial and error failure getting there as this was my first ever .deb package rebuild.

--K