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Problem with vsftpd: 500 OOPS: could not bind listening IPv4 socket

Last Update: 04.06.2008

Today I experienced a weird error message when I tried to connect to a FTP server in my internal network:

ftp sgtsus02
Verbindung mit sgtsus02 wurde hergestellt.
500 OOPS: could not bind listening IPv4 socket
Verbindung beendet durch Remotehost.

On my research on the internet I have found a post by user 'duval' on the forum http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=264003:
Edit the /etc/vsftpd.conf and make sure that you have commented out the "listen=YES", if you are trying to run vsftpd through xinetd.

I then checked my xinetd configuration and vsftpd was enabled under /etc/xinetd.d/vsftpd and xinetd was started. In the configuration of vsftpd (/etc/vsftpd.conf) the parameter "listen" was set on yes, which is only used for standalone FTP servers.

So I followed the advice of this user and commented out the "listen" parameter:

# Set listen=YES if you want vsftpd to run standalone
#
#listen=YES

And then stopped vsftpd and restarted xinetd:

sgtsus02:/etc # rcvsftpd stop
Shutting down vsftpd done
sgtsus02:/etc # rcxinetd restart
Shutting down xinetd: done
Starting INET services. (xinetd) done

Try another FTP connect and voilà:

ftp sgtsus02
Verbindung mit sgtsus02 wurde hergestellt.
220 (vsFTPd 2.0.4)
Benutzer (sgtsus02.sg01.nzzgruppe.net:(none)):