# pure-ftpd startup reports fail but process is running

## Kattsand

The problem: I recently did an update of my system (update and rebuild) and one of the things that broke afterwards was pure-ftpd.. 

I used etc-update to get the new config file for pure-ftpd (/etc/conf.d/pure-ftpd) but it was just a template so I replaced it with the backup I took minutes before updating. 

I vimdiff:ed the template and my backup config, the style was identical and I couldnt find any new type of args to use.

/etc/conf.d/pure-ftpd

```

IS_CONFIGURED="yes"

SERVER="-S 192.168.1.67,6001"

MAX_CONN="-c 30"

MAX_CONN_IP="-C 10"

DAEMON="-B"

DISK_FULL="-k 90%"

AUTH="-l mysql:/etc/pure-ftpd/pure-ftpd-mysql.conf"

LOG="-f ftp"

MISC_OTHER="-A -d -p 6000:6010 -E -x -R -Z -Y 0 -O xferlog:/var/log/ftp-transfer.log"

```

this is whats happening when I start pure-ftpd:

```

meow <user> # /etc/init.d/pure-ftpd start

 * Starting Pure-FTPd ...

 * Could not launch Pure-FTPd                                                          [ !! ]

```

checking status of pure-ftpd

```

meow <user># /etc/init.d/pure-ftpd status

 * status:  stopped

```

Ok, so its not running according to the system.. but if I check running processes with ps -ef I get this:

```

root     26133     1  0 10:12 ?        00:00:00 pure-ftpd (SERVER)

```

And I can successfully login to my ftp server.

This is the output I get from /var/log/ftp.log

```

May  2 09:17:41 meow pure-ftpd: (?@?) [ERROR] Unable to start a standalone server: [Address already in use]

```

Why is the startup process reporting fail despite starting a working process ?

Edit: just to clarify, I did not have a pure-ftpd process running when I started pure-ftpd. I also kill all pure-ftpd processes when I retry this attempt.

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## erik258

This is a guess, after installing and looking at /etc/init.d/pure-ftpd, but I think maybe your problem is related to a missing pid file.  I see in my init.d/pure-ftpd file (v 1.5 2010/03/22 19:41:47), that it saves the pid in /var/run/pure-ftpd.pid.  See if that file exists, and if it does, cat it and see if the PID it contains is the same as the pid of the running pure-ftpd daemon.  If it's not delete it, kill pure-tftpd and try the init script again.

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## andreas2000

same thing here - i am one step further: the pid number in the pid file is different from the real pid that the init script writes into /var/run/pure-ftpd.pid

Does anybody have an idea how to solve this?

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