Hi guys,
I am having problems with starting the virtualmin proftp server…how can i reinstall it with default settings using virtualmin/webmin?
Please note, i really dont feel reinstalling the entire webmin/virtualmin control panel is what i want to do…i have live websites running on the system, i have to resolve the proftp server error or reinstall proftp server.
error is as follows
Starting proftpd (via systemctl): proftpd.serviceJob for proftpd.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See “systemctl status proftpd.service” and “journalctl -xe” for details.
failed!
Here are the results of systemctl status proftpd.service
~]# systemctl status proftpd.service
● proftpd.service - LSB: Starts ProFTPD daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/proftpd; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2018-04-28 00:23:22 UTC; 2min 46s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 19298 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/proftpd start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Apr 28 00:23:21 server3 systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Starts ProFTPD daemon…
Apr 28 00:23:22 server3 proftpd[19298]: Starting ftp server: proftpd2018-04-28 00:23:22,443 server3 proftpd[19305]: fatal: MasqueradeAddress: unable to resolve “ftp.goannawebhosting.com.au” on line 53 of ‘/etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf’
Apr 28 00:23:22 server3 proftpd[19298]: failed!
Apr 28 00:23:22 server3 systemd[1]: proftpd.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
Apr 28 00:23:22 server3 systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Starts ProFTPD daemon.
Apr 28 00:23:22 server3 systemd[1]: proftpd.service: Unit entered failed state.
Apr 28 00:23:22 server3 systemd[1]: proftpd.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Operating system Debian Linux 9
Webmin version 1.881 Usermin version 1.741
Virtualmin version 6.03 Theme version Authentic Theme 19.09.2
Time on system Monday, April 30, 2018 8:32 AM Kernel and CPU Linux 4.9.0-6-amd64 on x86_64
Processor information Intel® Xeon® CPU @ 2.20GHz, 1 cores System uptime 2 days, 11 hours, 44 minutes
Running processes 108 CPU load averages 0.28 (1 min) 0.11 (5 mins) 0.03 (15 mins)
Real memory 399.46 MB used / 1.62 GB total
Virtual memory 174.06 MB used / 647.86 MB total
Debian based systems use “apt” for managing packages. You should be able to issue the command “apt-get install --reinstall PACKAGE_NAME” to try reinstalling a package.
That said, I personally don’t use FTP, as SFTP/SCP are more secure.
*** SFTP/SCP are part of SSH and are supported by most popular FTP clients ***
1.webmin>system>software packages
2.installed packages>search for package (type in proftp)
3. remove it and all non used dependencies
4. reinstall as follows
a. webmin>system>software packages
b. installed packages>search apt (type in proftpd)
c. click install
server should now be working (mine was automatically running after install)
I was gonna say “don’t reinstall, it’s just a tiny configuration issue!” but, you’ve already reinstalled and it seems to be sorted, so I guess it’s not relevant.
But, for future reference, re-installing services isn’t a good first instinct. It can remove a variety of existing configuration that you may not know about that Virtualmin made…ProFTPd doesn’t really get any domain specific configuration (usually, though if you used the practically never needed Virtual FTP feature it would have). Doing this with Apache (or Postfix or BIND), for example, could be disastrous if you didn’t have good backups of all config files.
In this case you had the MasqueradeAddress set, which probably doesn’t make sense on a Virtualmin server that’s providing FTP access to user homes (and isn’t something Virtualmin would have set).
the problem is that in the event of a configuration issue with proftp on virtualmin…there is (as best as i can find thus far) ZERO documentation on virtualmin/webmin that provides people with what is needed to configure and run it using virtualmin/webmin.
yes we can go to the proftp website and follow that information, however, the problem is…it appears to me that as soon as one starts using command line to configure and use these programs within virtualmin, shit starts to go wrong.
the main reason i believe we are using control panels is to provide a gui interface for administration and to help avoid stuff ups. Since virtualmin is not really providing much information about proftp, i found that the easiest means of sorting my problem (server refusing to start) was to just reinstall it.
Now on to my next problem…i will start a new thread about it.