Plesk Unable to FTP - missing scoreboard file (Linux)

On CentOS 6 and 7 if you experience issues logging on to FTP server please check the logs for the following:

tail -f /var/log/messages

Look for this error:

proftpd[11951]: fatal: ScoreboardFile: : unable to use '/var/run/proftpd/scoreboard': No such file or directory on line 74 of '/etc/proftpd.conf'

Check in /var/run for a proftpd folder, if it's missing you have a bug in your ProFTPd version usually caused by using the Atomic repo to update ProFTPd.

The solution is to remove the package and reinstall from Plesk repo:

rpm -e --nodeps psa-proftpd
plesk installer --select-release-current --install-component=proftpd
service xinetd restart

Then you should be able to connect again. Please note that any changes to proftpd.conf such as enabling custom PassivePorts will be lost and need to be recreated.

Alternatively

Cause - /var/run is mounted as tmpfs:

ls -ld /var/run
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 6 Jul 11 19:40 /var/run -> ../run

mount |grep run
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,seclabel,mode=755)

So file will be deleted after server reboot. Resolution

Change path for scoreboard at /etc/proftpd.conf:

grep scoreb /etc/proftpd.conf
ScoreboardFile /var/run/proftpd/scoreboard

to something like:

ScoreboardFile /var/proftpd.scoreboard

and restart xinetd:

service xinetd restart