Receiving the error “Proftpd connection refused”? We can help you.

Recently, we came across this error while managing FTP servers due to which the customer was not able to connect to FTP for long.

At Bobcares, we often get requests to fix the ProFTPD errors as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s get into the details and see how our Support Engineers fix ProFTPD error.

Why does ProFTPD connection refused error shows up?

Many of our customers receive errors like ProFTPD connection refused while managing FTP servers.

We’ve seen this error mainly occurring due to any problem with the FTP service.

Also, firewall blocking the access is another reason for this error to occur.

How we fix ProFTPD connection refused error?

At Bobcares, where we have more than a decade of expertise in managing servers, we see many customers face problems while managing ProFTPD servers.

Now, let’s see how our Support Engineers fix this error.

Improper installation

Recently, one of our customers had a problem with his FTP on the Virtualmin server. When he tried to connect to ProFTPD server, he got an error as below.

ftp> localhost ftp> open (to) localhost ftp: connect to address ::1: Connection refused Trying 127.0.0.1... ftp: connect: Connection refused.

While checking, our Support Engineers found that the error was caused due to the improper installation of ProFTPD.

So, we deleted the configuration and data files of ProFTPD-basic from Ubuntu Xenial with the following command.

apt-get purge proftpd-basic

After that, we reinstall the ProFTPD and its dependent packages as below.

apt-get install proftpd

At last, we launch ProFTPD service.

service proftpd restart

This is how we fixed the error.

Service not enabled

Similarly, another customer got a connection refused error in Webmin server when trying to upload initial files using FTP and the error msg looked like,

Status: Connecting to XX.XXX.XXX.XXX:21...
Status: Connection attempt failed with "ECONNREFUSED - Connection refused by server".
Error: Could not connect to server

On checking, our Support Engineers found that the ProFTPD service was not running on the server.

So, we used the below command to test whether the FTP service is running on the server.

telnet localhost 21

As a result, we got the below error message.

Trying ::1... Trying 127.0.0.1... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused.

When checking the status, we got the following result.

service proftpd status: ● proftpd.service - LSB: Starts ProFTPD daemon Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/proftpd) Active: active (running) since Wed 2019-03-16 00:38:10 EET; 5h 44min ago Process: 455 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/proftpd start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) CGroup: /system.slice/proftpd.service └─572 proftpd: (accepting connections)

Therefore, we enabled ProFTPD on the server via Webmin control panel >> Home >> server-status option

Finally, that fixed the error.

[Need assistance to fix ProFTPD errors? We’ll help you.]

Conclusion

In short, A ProFTPD connection refused error occurs when the server has a problem with either with an FTP service or with a firewall blocking access to it. Today, we saw the topmost reason for the ProFTPD error and how our Support Engineers fixed it.