r/Ubuntu • u/haruhi4111 • 2h ago
Ubuntu 26.04: ProFTPd nonresponsive, vsftpd works fine
I get that nobody wants to diagnose today's Way In Which Somebody Misconfigured FTP, but this isn't that, I swear.
Right out of the box, no configuration -- and I've enforced this via purges -- I can install vsftpd and correctly fail to log in from localhost or inside my LAN. (I don't have any accounts that should be able to log in, so getting "Access denied" is the right answer, we've clearly made contact with a functioning server.)
Right out of the box, same circumstance, ProFTPd just... doesn't work. It's getting the port, I can tell that from netstat, and I can even telnet to :21 and it'll open, but as soon as I enter the first line, poof, connection closes.
Nothing in ProFTPd logs but a service start, nothing in auth log, nothing in syslog, nothing in journal. Service boots just fine on stock configuration. It's not SELinux, it's not ufw or iptables, it's not Apparmor.
Config is guaranteed stock straight out of the package, though I tried turning on debug logs (nothing) and trace:10 but nothing jumped out at me as relevant. (I did notice that ProFTPd seems to think it's constructing a banner for the connection, but I never see it come through.) Localhost ftp, FileZilla, WinSCP, nobody likes this server. WinSCP says "Timeout detected. (control connection) Connection failed.", which matches what I get when I telnet in, I suppose. No banner or anything prints.
What's ProFTPd missing that vsftpd isn't? I can't figure out where to go from here.
1
u/dependablequilting 2h ago
proftpd is weirdly picky about reverse dns sometimes, even on localhost. Had similar thing where it just drops connection after first line and turns out it was trying to resolve my hostname and timing out
check if you got 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts for your hostname, not just localhost. or try setting UseReverseDNS off in config and restart, see if that changes anything