Jason:

> I'm trying to get an ftp daemon running.  I'm using Red Hat 7.3.  I tried
> starting it through xinetd, but no luck (I'm reasonably sure I know how to use
> xinetd, as I started telnetd and ipop3d that way). 

First of all you should be sure xinetd is running.  (Service xinetd start)

Then, to start the FTP daemon with xinetd, you edited the /etc/xinetd.d/wu-ftpd
file, and changed the "disable = yes" to "disable = no".  Then, you issued a
SIGUSR2 signal to xinetd, right?  (Or, did a "service xinetd restart").  ((Or,
you could always reboot.  Where have we heard that before?))

> So, I tried a brute force method:
> $ /usr/sbin/in.ftpd

This is probably not going to work, because the file descriptor that the FTP
daemon expects to get is a socket.  When you start it from the interactive
shell, you aren't giving it a socket as a file descriptor, which is why it's 
complaining.

You can verify that something is listening on port 21 (it won't be the FTP 
daemon, but it will be xinetd) by doing this:

[73] maradi.ockers.net:/etc > netstat -nap | grep :21
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:21              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      9520/xinetd

Just because there is a listener on port 21 does not mean that any sockets can 
be opened to that port on your IP address.  You may have an iptables firewall 
running, which may be blocking (at the INPUT chain of the filter table) 
inbound FTP connections, even from localhost perhaps.

You should run "iptables -F" to clear the entire iptables, then try to connect 
to your FTP again.  You should try to originate the connection from your 
localhost if possible, by doing "ftp 127.0.0.1" at the command prompt, and see 
if any FTP daemon responds.

Then, you'll verify that you don't have a filtering firewall or something else 
that is living between the host you're coming from and the FTP server.  It's 
possible that a filtering firewall can also prevent inbound FTP (or any other 
type of access), depending on its configuration.

Hope this helps.

> But,

> $ ps -ef | grep ftp
> root     27081     1  0 Sep14 ?        00:02:51 /usr/bin/gftp-gtk
> root     27084 27081  0 Sep14 ?        00:00:04 /usr/bin/gftp-gtk

> and,

> $ tail /var/log/messages
> Sep 21 03:29:16 charles ftpd[25655]: wu-ftpd - TLS settings: control allow, client_cert allow, data allow
> Sep 21 03:29:16 charles ftpd[25655]: getpeername (/usr/sbin/in.ftpd): Socket operation on non-socket

--
Jim Ockers (ockers@ockers.net)
Contact info: please see http://www.ockers.net/

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