PROFTPD

Virtualmin
21

Actually, seeing what kind of problems your hoster has with their installation images, I personally would either manually install an Ubuntu if that’s possible, or more likely switch to a different hoster.

Having such issues with ProFTPD on a fresh install, I don’t really want to know how many things will go wrong over the course of your hosting endeavors, when it comes to more complex things. :slight_smile:

I’m not too fond in general of this OpenVZ stuff, considering users here report different and odd problems with that like once or twice per week.

22

We’re having the same issue. Proftpd is failing on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit with XEN PV enabled.

Not sure why, but this is bad news especially since the XEN version of Ubuntu is now deployed by Citrix XEN server.

How can we get a new “good” build of proftpd?

Thanks

23

Well, there’s nothing wrong with the default ProFTPd package that comes with Ubuntu 10.04 – those packages are provided by Ubuntu, and should work fine out of the box. There’s quite a few folks using that right now.

We’ve only seen problems when dealing with non-default packages, or systems with too little memory,

In the thread above, the checksum for the proftpd binary was different from a default installation.

You may want to try obtaining the ProFTPd package from a different mirror, and installing it in place of what you have now.

-Eric

24

Hm. There was plenty of memory on the server… To install Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS 64 bit on Citrix Xen server 6, we are forced to pull the XEN-ready web installer from archive.ubuntu.com ---- so not only it’s slow and frustrating, I bet you it’s got plenty of non standard packages.

At this moment, we reverted our latest server to a classic Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit - non para virtualized (so non XEN-ready). And the virtualmin works without a glitch. No issues whatsoever with FTP.

I am out of time today, but I will be trying it again on monday with a fresh install from the XEN repos and the same virtualmin license that we just installed. If all goes well, we will be using that one instead.

I’ll keep you posted.

25

Still fails. We gave the machine 4 GB of RAM. Proftpd is still failing with “Illegal instruction”

We’ve been posting the issue with Citrix http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1594245&#1594245

because it looks like a Xen Server issue more so than a virtualmin issue.

Eric, how can we get another proftpd package installed on the box?

Thanks

26

Well, you’re using the ProFTPd package provided by Ubuntu. If you’d like a different package, you’d need to do one of the following:

  1. Compile ProFTPd from source, and use that

  2. Find an alternate provider for the ProFTPd package

  3. Create your own ProFTPd package from a newer Ubuntu version

I don’t really have a recommendation there, as each of those comes with drawbacks… the ideal thing to try would be #3, but that can be a lot of work if you aren’t familiar with building .deb packages.

Using #2 is simple, but I don’t know of an alternate provider of a ProFTPd package for Ubuntu.

Which leaves #1 – compiling it all yourself. That can be a bit of work as well, though may be your only option if the other two choices don’t work out.

-Eric

27

Yeah, I figured out as much. If you follow that other thread I posted on Citrix’s website you will notice that I just compiled proftpd myself and it works.

But I don’t like it: it makes disaster recovery a non-standard process. Bad practice.

This kind of stuff is supposed to work out of the box. the other question it’s raising is: what other plain vanilla packages will start failing?

My preference also goes to #3. I actually started the learning process, but it looks like a giant mess to make a debian package.

===========================================

For future reference, here’s how we recompiled proftpd:

  1. dependencies:

apt-get install make gcc libssl-dev libmysqlclient-dev postgresql-server-dev-8.4 libsqlite3-dev libiodbc2-dev libldap2-dev libwrap0-dev

  1. download the latest tarball, extract and get configure command line by typing “proftpd -V” with the older version (if you have it available before)

./configure ‘–prefix=/usr’ ‘–with-includes=/usr/include/postgresql:/usr/include/mysql’ ‘–mandir=/usr/share/man’ ‘–sysconfdir=/etc/proftpd’ ‘–localstatedir=/var/run’ ‘–libexecdir=/usr/lib/proftpd’ ‘–enable-sendfile’ ‘–enable-facl’ ‘–enable-dso’ ‘–enable-autoshadow’ ‘–enable-ctrls’ ‘–with-modules=mod_readme’ ‘–enable-ipv6’ ‘–enable-nls’ ‘–build’ ‘x86_64-linux-gnu’ ‘–with-shared=mod_unique_id:mod_site_misc:mod_load:mod_ban:mod_quotatab:mod_sql:mod_sql_mysql:mod_sql_postgres:mod_sql_sqlite:mod_sql_odbc:mod_dynmasq:mod_quotatab_sql:mod_ldap:mod_quotatab_ldap:mod_ratio:mod_tls:mod_rewrite:mod_radius:mod_wrap:mod_wrap2:mod_wrap2_file:mod_wrap2_sql:mod_quotatab_file:mod_quotatab_radius:mod_facl:mod_ctrls_admin:mod_ifsession’ ‘build_alias=x86_64-linux-gnu’ 'CFLAGS=-O2 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -DHAVE_OPENSSL -DUSE_LDAP_TLS ’ ‘LDFLAGS=-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions’ ‘CPPFLAGS=’ ‘CXXFLAGS=-g -O2’ ‘FFLAGS=-g -O2’

  1. compile and install

make && make install

28

My preference also goes to #3. I actually started the learning process, but it looks like a giant mess to make a debian package.

Oh, don’t start from scratch… I would suggest grabbing an existing Ubuntu source package for ProFTPd on a newer version of Ubuntu, and then attempting to compile it. The only things you might need to deal with are to tweak any dependencies if the compile fails.

But you may need to deal up a bit on installing and compiling .deb packages.

This kind of stuff is supposed to work out of the box

I completely agree! And it usually does. The fact that only two people have reported this problem, and it works great for other folks, is quite strange.

You may also want to take this to the Ubuntu community, and see if they have some thoughts. The problem has only been reported on Ubuntu systems, and it’s a package provided by their “Universe” repository. It’s possible that they might have some thoughts on what’s causing this.

-Eric

29

Thanks for your input. Yeah, I think I should take this up to the Ubuntu community.

What strikes me as strange is that it’s only happening in PV mode (para virtualized) on the XEN server, but not when we’re in HVM mode (simulated).

Not sure what the difference is. I just know that PV mode exposes more of the processor than HVM and this might be a processor incompatibility. If you look at the compilation options, it’s compiled with O2 optimizations. That could be conflicting.

Thanks for the help. Compiling does fix the problem but still… I am worried about other packages failing…

MD