I'm a newbie with LInux. I'm in an emergency situation. I just took over the Network admin job in a mixed Linux/Microsoft environment. The previous guy left without leaving any real documentation. He had setup an ftp server on the linux box that allowed the users to ftp into their home directories. The linux server sits behind a sonicwall firewall appliance and links the Internet Ip to an internal ip on the server. I can't seem to find the ftp program or it's configurations to restart the service. The ftp service stop responding about 2 days after I took over. I need to get the box back on line. I tried starting vsftp and that wasn't the answer. Any help would suffice.

Maybe it was another ftpd, try:

$ su (enter root password when prompted)
# updatedb
# exit
$ slocate ftpd

See what files turn up, maybe proftpd was being used?

What happens when you start vsftp? Can users connect to port 21?

As a side issue, seeing as your job now requires some familiarity with linux, I strongly advise you get some boxes installed at home with linux on, both as servers and as your desktop environment (if you haven't done so already!) - in my opinion you can't learn linux out of a book, you need to have a *nix box in front of you. Obviously you'll need to be familiar with RH9 (I assume anyway, your 'Distribution' says RH9, get whatever distro your workplace is using), but after a while, it's probably best to play with other distros and other OS/s such as *BSD

Good luck, I hope everything goes well - post back with more problems on the FTPD if need be.

To my knowledge there are a few ftp ptograms in use in the linux scene, and the most popular would be scftpd and wu-ftpd. I thought the scftpd is more widespread, but could be very wrong.

So to check out wich one you use there are some options, I'm not sure they work on all flavours but okay.

type as root:

ntsysv

and look for anything containing ftp. Then you know what ftpd u use.

Then on redhat type

service ***ftp* restart

(where the stars represent the missing characters of the specific daemon u use, for example

service scftpd restart

Perhaps (this could be lame, but okay) you forgot the d behind scftp? All daemons normally have a d behind their name to show their function)

Let us know what results you achieved okay? Thanks!