vsftpd dead but subsys locked

[Kashif Jameel]

I'm trying to ftp to my Linux server but i can't connect. I checked the status of vsftpd service and got this msg:
vsftpd dead but subsys locked

tried to stop and restart the service, but couldn't. Nothing seems to work here.
Anybody has any solution to this problem...???

[Court Campbell]

this is probably an selinux issue. You can temporarily disable it by typing

# setenforce 0

then try restarting vsftpd

# service vsftpd restart

If that works you should look in var/log/messages to see what the issue is. Just grep for avc in the file. If you can, post the output. I think that one of your files may have an incorrect context. You can also try this:

# service vsftpd stop
# rpm --verify vsftpd

This will show what is different about the files currently in place and the ones that originally were installed with the package. You might want to read the man for rpm and go to the section for --verify. It sill produce a string by each file that is different. This is from the man:

S file Size differs
M Mode differs (includes permissions and file type)
5 MD5 sum differs
D Device major/minor number mismatch
L readLink(2) path mismatch
U User ownership differs
G Group ownership differs
T mTime differs

This should hopefully help you with trying to diagnose the issue.

If selinux is the issue and you want to diable it permanently edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux and make SELINUX=disabled.

[Ivan Ferreira]

You should try to start the daemon not using the rc scripts, in this way you will be able to see the error that reports if nothing are logged to the log files.