vsftpd fails to start (status=2)

Solution 1:

In this case, it was fortunate that another server had been started successfully with a very similar working configuration, so conceptually troubleshooting could be done be looking for differences.

Solution: Make absolutely sure any files referenced by the configuration actually exist (or are accessible to the server). For example:

rsa_cert_file=/path/to/vsftpd.crt
rsa_private_key_file=/path/to/vsftpd.key

In the working install, the keys had already been transferred to the system as part of standing up a web server, but on this system, the vsftpd were in a location that had not yet been synced.

Populating the .crt and .key files resolved this error.