500 OOPS error from vsftpd

If you find yourself with the ever-so-peculiar 500 OOPS error from vsftpd when you attempt to login over SSH, there could be a few different things at play. Generally, this is the type of error you will get:

500 OOPS: cannot change directory:/home/someuser
500 OOPS: child died

You can search for a solution in this order:

Home Directory

Does the user’s home directory even exist? Check /etc/passwd for the current home directory for the user and see what’s set:

# grep someuser /etc/passwd
someuser❌10001:2524::/var/www/someuser:/bin/bash

In this case, does /var/www/someuser exist? If it doesn’t, fix that and then move onto the next solution if you’re still having problems.

File/Directory Permissions

Be sure that the user that you are logging in as actually has permissions to be in the directory. This affects users that have home directories of /var/www/html because the execute bit normally isn’t set for the world on /var/www or /var/www/html. Make sure that the appropriate permissions and ownerships are set, and this should help eliminate the issue.

SELINUX

If SELINUX is rearing its ugly head on the server, this can be a problem. Check your current SELINUX status and disable it if necessary:

# setenforce
Enforcing
# setenforce 0

Try to login over FTP again and you should have a success. If you want to turn off SELINUX entirely, adjust /etc/sysconfig/selinux (RHEL4) or /etc/selinux/config (RHEL5).