Here are two answers,

Chuck Wegrzyn — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:13:07 +0000

Here are two answers, depending on your OS - Linux or Windows.

For Linux it is probably because you are executing ejabberdctl in a non-root acct. You ought to try: sudo ejabberdctl ....

For Windows: Check to see if you have ejabberd running as a service. If so, ejabberdctl will not work. What I do is make running ejabberd "manual" in the admin service screen. Then I stop it from inside the admin service screen. Afterward I can start, stop and control ejabberd using ejabberdctl.

Peace.

In Debian package,

kostix — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:04:22 +0000

In Debian package, ejabberdctl is not quite the same thing as in stock Process-One package, namely, it only can be used to access a running server. To start/stop the server you should use the regular OS methods:

# /etc/init.d/ejabberd {start|stop|restart}
or
# invoke-rc.d ejabberd {start|stop|restart}

ejabberd - Comments for "&quot;ejabberdctl start&quot; does not work"

Here are two answers,

In Debian package,

ejabberd - Comments for ""ejabberdctl start" does not work"