Should proftpd depend on logger since it can use one? I have set it to log to the "auth" facility, which of course failed when syslog wasn't running. But I'm not sure of a config file setting warrants a (trivial) change to the ebuild
Thanks for your report. A few days ago ProFTPD 1.3.3rc4 has been released and I posted an ebuild patch and a new version of the ProFTPD init script in Gentoo Bug #305343 which are solving this issue.
Thanks Bernd, fixed with new 1.3.3_rc4 just added to tree from bug #305343