vsftpd does not create pid file required for monit

You can try this: monit: check process without pidfile

check process vsftpd
 matching vsftpd
 start program = "/etc/init.d/vsftpd start"
 stop program = "/etc/init.d/vsftpd stop"

Alternatively you can follow the guide I put together using aforementioned init file. Created RPM to keep the system consistent across updates (via fpm). New init file has modified service name vsftpd-pid so you can keep vsftpd stopped and vsftpd-pid running.

Remember to change your monit start and stop commands too.

More info here: http://bemehow.github.com/2012/11/15/monit-vsftpd/

Yes, this is normal (for any distro). vsftpd does not write out a pid file.

I created a replacement init script for vsftpd on Centos 5.4 that will create the PID files:

http://gist.github.com/508889