Newbie with New Red Hat 9 install. During Install requested FTP server setup. Can see vsftpd and xinetd start in boot seq. Can't login remotely (Win2K machine). Do receive Login prompt ... respond with UN/PW that is valid on FTP machine ... not accepted... (local_enable=yes in vsftpd.conf). Anonymous not accepted even though ... anonymous_enable=yes in vsftpd.conf. Don't see various files like ftpaccess, ftphosts, etc. anywhere??? Where should vsftpd.conf be? Almost seems like vsftpd.conf is not being used? Very confused! Becoming irrational!! Misco$oft starting to look good! Please Heeeelp!

Welcom to LQ.

Make sure you are loggin in as a user and not root. Can you get a connection to the server from the server itself?:
ftp localhost

If you still have problems can you post your vsftpd.conf file.

Attempts to login from the server (not root!) return:

500 OOPS: str_getpwnam: ftpsecure

Result is the same in gFTP as well as a terminal window!

Can you post vsftpd.conf

File is located in etc/vsftpd/

# Example config file /etc/vsftpd.conf

anonymous_enable=YES
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
local_umask=022
anon_upload_enable=YES
anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES
dirmessage_enable=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
chown_uploads=YES
chown_username=grandall
# You may override where the log file goes if you like. The default is shown
# below.
#xferlog_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log
xferlog_std_format=YES
#
# You may change the default value for timing out an idle session.
#idle_session_timeout=600
#
# You may change the default value for timing out a data connection.
#data_connection_timeout=120
#
nopriv_user=ftpsecure
#
# Enable this and the server will recognise asynchronous ABOR requests. Not
# recommended for security (the code is non-trivial). Not enabling it,
# however, may confuse older FTP clients.
#async_abor_enable=YES
#
# By default the server will pretend to allow ASCII mode but in fact ignore
# the request. Turn on the below options to have the server actually do ASCII
# mangling on files when in ASCII mode.
# Beware that turning on ascii_download_enable enables malicious remote parties
# to consume your I/O resources, by issuing the command "SIZE /big/file" in
# ASCII mode.
# These ASCII options are split into upload and download because you may wish
# to enable ASCII uploads (to prevent uploaded scripts etc. from breaking),
# without the DoS risk of SIZE and ASCII downloads. ASCII mangling should be
# on the client anyway..
#ascii_upload_enable=YES
#ascii_download_enable=YES
#
# You may fully customise the login banner string:
ftpd_banner=Welcome to The High Desert Museum FTP service.
#
# You may specify a file of disallowed anonymous e-mail addresses. Apparently
# useful for combatting certain DoS attacks.
#deny_email_enable=YES
# (default follows)
#banned_email_file=/etc/vsftpd.banned_emails
#
# You may specify an explicit list of local users to chroot() to their home
# directory. If chroot_local_user is YES, then this list becomes a list of
# users to NOT chroot().
#chroot_list_enable=YES
# (default follows)
#chroot_list_file=/etc/vsftpd.chroot_list
#
# You may activate the "-R" option to the builtin ls. This is disabled by
# default to avoid remote users being able to cause excessive I/O on large
# sites. However, some broken FTP clients such as "ncftp" and "mirror" assume
# the presence of the "-R" option, so there is a strong case for enabling it.
ls_recurse_enable=YES

pam_service_name=vsftpd
userlist_enable=YES
#enable for standalone mode
listen=YES
tcp_wrappers=YES

In Red Hat 9, vsftpd should work 'out of the box' for both anonymous download and local users (i.e. Linux system users) download/upload (it did for me). It should work fine so long as you:
A. Are using a real Linux user id and password (or 'anonymous' and an email address), with the correct case.
B. Haven't edited any of the files which came with vsftpd ('rpm -ql vsftpd' will list the files).
C. Have the FTP server running ('/etc/rc.d/init.d/vsftpd status' as root will tell you).
D. Don't have a firewall running which is configured to block you FTP server.

You may want to check '/var/log/vsftpd.log' or you 'dmesg' to see if their are any errors.

A. Yes
B. No edits
C. Here may be the problem ... response is

500: OOPS: vsftpd: Cannot open specified config file.

D. I have a Firewall between my Micro$oft Exchange/main file server and the Internet, but the machine I'm trying to access is a seperate (local IP Address) IntRAnet Apache Web server. My assumption (Yah, Yah, I know!!) was that the Firewall was blocking access from the internet to the main file server only. Am I wrong here?

E. Logs are empty

What are the permissions on the config file? Have you tried restarting the service:
service vsftpd restart