I figured this was worth noting to the list for those out there that may be
having a problem with some users getting a slow login to FTP. On some of my
boxes some users complained about FTP taking a really long time to login. I
was able to replicate this from my home computer but from another external
computer it worked quickly.
Of course I found in the threads all the types of fixes like turning off
IdenLookups and ReverseDNS. But for the computers having the issue this
shortened the time but it was still in most cases 30-45 seconds still. But
from my same machine at home I could log into FTP on other machines and it
was very quick.
So I started to look at what was in common between the machines that were
slow versus the ones that were quick.
In all cases it turned out that the ones slow had only a single IP address
on the server. The ones fast had multiple IP's and the IP I was connecting
to was not that of the IP that was first added to the machine.
So I started looking at the single IP machines proftpd.conf file. What I
found that was different is this.
1. Machines that I had setup with multiple IP's I had used the first IP only
for management of the box. No actual sites used that IP address.
2. Machines that I setup with 1 IP all used the same IP even for sites.
So on a multiple IP box the main IP that was not being used on any sites was
ALSO NOT in the proftpd.conf file. Makes sense since the main IP was not
being used by any sites.
On the single IP box the IP was listed in proftpd.conf as a virtual site. So
I decided to try and remove the virtual configuration for the single IP
since no other IP's were in use on this box. Reset my xinetd service. And to
much of my surprise the slow issue went away entirely.
So looks like if you use your IP address that you server was first setup to
also assign to sites you need to remove the virtual configuration for it. If
you use multiple IP's on the same box then probably best to not use the IP
you configured the box with unless you are ok with the proftpd.conf file
settings for that IP being global.
Anyways I am sure there are hundreds of people out there with the same
problem I had. Hope this helps others. It worked on every box I had that was
having this issue.
Jim