Proftpd fails to launch on startup, but will launch manually

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ToxicBard · #1 Post by **ToxicBard** » 2016-12-07 17:38

Proftpd seems to be consistently failing to start on boot, but when I launch the service manually after boot, it consistently works with no problem. Strangely enough, the output of "systemctl status proftpd.service -l" doesn't tell me why it's crashing, although all of my Google searches on the matter seem to suggest that it should.

I'm setting up a fresh install of Debian for the first time. I'm trying to import a configuration that worked perfectly fine on my Ubuntu setup.

When I clear everything out and use a blank proftpd.conf, it works fine, which at first would suggest a config problem. However, I went through the process of removing and commenting out everything line-by-line in order to find the offending config line(s), and there wasn't a single line of code which would consistently cause the problem. Also, when I tell proftpd to do a syntax check on the config file, it doesn't find any problems. Considering those things, plus the fact that this config gives me no problems on my Ubuntu setup, plus the fact that it runs fine when started manually after bootup via the terminal, it seems unlikely that it's a config issue.

I thought that it might be failing because the service was being started too soon, so I added "service proftpd start" to "/etc/rc.local", but that didn't work either.

Does anybody have any ideas? Why would this be failing on boot, but not when run manually after boot? Why would it be failing without giving any information as to why? Where would I look to find more detailed information as to the cause of failure? Where should I go next in troubleshooting?

Here's the output of "systemctl status proftpd.service -l":

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● proftpd.service - LSB: Starts ProFTPD daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/proftpd)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2016-12-07 11:57:28 EST; 29min ago
  Process: 906 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/proftpd start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Running "journalctl -xn" doesn't return anything helpful either.

There's also nothing noteworthy in the proftpd.log file, either:

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2016-12-07 02:44:18,970 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[3479] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 (stable) (built Tue May 19 2015 11:09:58 UTC) standalone mode STARTUP
2016-12-07 02:48:41,111 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[3479] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD killed (signal 15)
2016-12-07 02:48:41,112 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[3479] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 standalone mode SHUTDOWN
2016-12-07 02:51:20,779 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[1776] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 (stable) (built Tue May 19 2015 11:09:58 UTC) standalone mode STARTUP
2016-12-07 02:54:56,206 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[1776] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD killed (signal 15)
2016-12-07 02:54:56,207 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[1776] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 standalone mode SHUTDOWN
2016-12-07 02:56:58,144 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2263] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 (stable) (built Tue May 19 2015 11:09:58 UTC) standalone mode STARTUP
2016-12-07 02:59:15,793 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2263] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD killed (signal 15)
2016-12-07 02:59:15,794 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2263] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 standalone mode SHUTDOWN
2016-12-07 02:59:15,882 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2413] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 (stable) (built Tue May 19 2015 11:09:58 UTC) standalone mode STARTUP
2016-12-07 02:59:18,545 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2413] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD killed (signal 15)
2016-12-07 02:59:18,546 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2413] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 standalone mode SHUTDOWN
2016-12-07 11:53:54,782 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2162] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 (stable) (built Tue May 19 2015 11:09:58 UTC) standalone mode STARTUP
2016-12-07 11:56:32,028 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2162] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD killed (signal 15)
2016-12-07 11:56:32,029 Patrick-Desktop proftpd[2162] Patrick-Desktop: ProFTPD 1.3.5 standalone mode SHUTDOWN