FTPpro Server Randomly Shuts Down

Submitted by vbgscloud on Mon, 03/02/2015 - 16:46

Just as the title says, every now and then I have someone telling me they cannot connect via FTP credentials I have shared, and what I keep finding under system information is that the server is shut down.

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Comments

Submitted by andreychek on Mon, 03/02/2015 - 17:15

Howdy -- you could be seeing a resource issue there.

Are you using a VPS, or dedicated server? If a VPS, what kind of VPS is it?

Also, what is the output of this command:

free -m

Submitted by vbgscloud on Mon, 03/02/2015 - 20:02 

         total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem: 16049 8422 7626 387 246 5592 -/+ buffers/cache: 2584 13464 Swap: 511 44 467

...is the output of the command 'free -m'

As for VPS/Dedicated... both? I think? We are running a linode cloud based server with virtualmin installed to setup virtual servers.

Submitted by andreychek on Mon, 03/02/2015 - 20:08

The only times I've seen ProFTPd stop working are on systems with low resources. It doesn't appear you're low on resources though.

If you start ProFTPd back up, does it begin working again?

Also, do you see any errors in the logs that might explain why it stopped running?

Submitted by vbgscloud on Tue, 03/03/2015 - 12:36

Well it seems when we check out Virtual Server at our host Linode, we have additional disk space and resources being eaten up that are not reported/reflected in the system stats on Virtualmin.

We are upping our server there for additional resources, so I'll keep an eye out for random shutdowns beyond that point.

Thanks

Submitted by vbgscloud on Mon, 03/09/2015 - 12:21

So, it looks like we still have random shutdowns of ProFTPD on our server.

I found this after some research for a workaround, and wanted to get your take on it.

/etc/init.d/proftpd

FIND THIS... start-stop-daemon --stop --signal $SIGNAL --quiet --pidfile "$PIDFILE" CHANGE TO THIS... start-stop-daemon --stop --signal $SIGNAL --retry 1 --quiet --pidfile "$PIDFILE"

Submitted by andreychek on Mon, 03/09/2015 - 12:29

That's really strange that you're seeing so many issues with ProFTPd... are you seeing anything unusual related to FTP in the logs when this occurs?

Your suggestion is certainly worth a try though, let us know if that helps.

Submitted by vbgscloud on Mon, 03/09/2015 - 13:00

I have to track down the timing of it and sort it all out, but I know we are performing some server to server migrations, and it's taking a lot of resources, I get emails from our host at linode saying we've exceeded limits on the server such as disk i/o for hours on end. Based on what was said about server resources and proftpd, I would assume that this is the case. But I still need to identify exactly when/where in the logs.