Applicable to:
- Plesk for Linux
Symptoms
-
When listing a directory with more than 20000 files in it via FTP, it takes more than 2 minutes to complete.
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ProFTPd version 1.3.6 is installed:
# proftpd -v
ProFTPD Version 1.3.6
Possible consequences
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High CPU usage 100% maybe observed on the server.
Cause
This is caused by ProFTPD bug/issue described in upstream bug #863 and ProFTPd bug 4360
The issue is also registered as a Plesk bug with ID PPPM-9486, to track down when the issue will be resolved on ProFTPd side
Note: Consider subscribing to this article in order to get notified when the fix is released or check for the ID in our changelog
Resolution
As a workaround, setup the following additional configuration file:
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Connect to the server via SSH
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Create the following file:
# touch /etc/proftpd.d/70-disable-fs-cache.conf
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Add the following text:
CONFIG_TEXT: FSCachePolicy off
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Restart the service:
# service xinetd restart
Comments
10 comments
Is there any way to downgrade the ftpversion to a previous one? I have some servers with lots of users doing LIST comands with a few hundrs of files per user and the CPU is super high.
Hello,
Yes, downgrade is possible. Older package for your OS could be found here:
https://pkgs.org/download/proftpd
There are several guides available on the web on how to downgrade package in rpm- or deb-based OSes. The only thing that should be done is to backing up configuration files:
/etc/xinetd.d/ftp_psa
/etc/proftpd.conf
/etc/proftpd.include
However such procedure has not been tested in Plesk environment and that is why I could not recommend one or another way of package downgrading.
Hi Konstantin,
The current package installed in plesk says "This package is built for PLESK with our own mod_quota patch." I'm afraid that if I install a package directly from pckgs.org I might lose some functionality or that plesk will overwrite it in the next update.
Is there any way to find and install the older package from the Plesk source? Or do you think that is the same?
Hello,
I have double checked this question and can confirm that there is no possibility to downgrade psa-proftpd package as there are dependencies on plesk-web-hosting package. And we do not recommend you to do such downgrade because slow directory listing is caused by additional security checks which provide your server with better security.
Great! I guess we will have to wait until the ProFTPd bug 4360 is resolved
My two cents are that is not just the case with 20.000 files, a bunch of users with directory listings of 500 items can also bring the server almost down :(
@Dani Mora
I also hope that proftpd will fix that soon.
You can also split folders with large amount of files to several sub-folders until the fix become available.
Seems that proftpd 1.3.6a has been released that that version solves the problem.
When should we expect the new 1.3.6a to be available in plesk?
Reference: http://bugs.proftpd.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4360#c12
Hello Dani,
According to the test of our Development Team and comments to this bug (http://bugs.proftpd.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4360#c13).
The issue remains unresolved.
We continue tracking this issue and waiting for the resolution from ProFTPD.
Stay tuned to the article updates,
Any update on this? ProFTPD supposedly fixed this in 1.3.6c released about five to six weeks ago.
Hi David Hubbard,
As far as I see in my test environment (CentOS 7 with Plesk Obsidian 18.0.25) it comes with ProFTPd version 1.3.6c, so for that release, it should be fixed already.
And verified as well in another test env (Debian 9 with also Plesk Obsidian 18.0.25).
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