[BlueOnyx:16368] Re: FTP knock on problems

[George F. Nemeyer]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2014 bluequartz at ozin.com wrote:

> I am running 5106R on one of my servers I have pulled down the latest
> updates and FTP works fine.
>
> However, the Status page now shows Red with:
>
> The FTP server is not running and could not be restarted.
>
> Known issue? If so is there a fix?

I'm seeing this too, but have also noticed that it's not just the Active
Monitor that acts strange:

-The Active Monitor *sometimes* is green on the upper right notification
area.. but immediately turns red if you click on the ball to see the full
monitor.

- Running swatch *sometimes* causes the ball to turn green...but not
always.  I've not found a consistent thing that works.  Also, it will
sometimes turn green only for a few seconds.

- I've caught the ball turning green 'by itself' on occasion, but it
almost immediately turns red again.

- When FTP session is attempted after the box has been sitting a while
with no FTP going, the first try fails with 'connection refused', but the
second attempt always seems to connect ok.

My guess is:

Since ProFTPd is running as an inetd function, it's not actually running
until there's an access tried to inetd that starts it.  It seems like the
startup delay causes the initial attempt to fail to connect, but then the
second attempt finds a running ftpd, so starts right up.  Likewise, any
access that happens while the ftpd is running also immediately succeeds.
It's only after ftp has been unused for a time does the initial failure
symptom recur.

This would also cause Active monitor to fail, since it would try to
connect to see if the daemon is ok, but would fail due to the startup
delay.

I'm wondering if this might have something to do with there being 2 config
files and sometimes monitor probes or startup connections get the 'wrong'
flavor of ftpd.  I've not had time to try using only one type of
connection.. open or secure.