Yeh this is a known new issue since mta 1.0.4 - we have an auto-restart script which re-launches the server normally when it crashes.. unfortunately in 1.0.4 mta introduced a check to see if there's any open connections to it's built in web server.. if any are open, the server launches, but only to a console screen that reports that it is unable to start the http server and stays running with that error displayed.
A bit lame, since it could just report that to the logs then exit, but nooooo - they only think of crap windows server setups, not people sensible enough to script a way of managing their mta server crashes.
So when I got home, I reattached to the screen session within which the mta server runs, shut down the server (that wasn't fucking started anyway, due to said http error) then relaunched it..
mta server 1.0.4 wrote:[18:33:31] Resources: 859 loaded, 0 failed
[18:33:31] Querying game-monitor.com master server... success!
[18:33:32] Starting resources.................................
[18:33:33] Server started and is ready to accept connections!