In the apache documentation they suggest for running apache as a non-root user, but they also suggest making a user specifically for apache and not using " nobody " or " nouser ". Is it possible that we could distribute apache configured to run as " httpd " or somthing similar?
This will break previous installations of apache that might already count on apache running as nobody. Under normal conitions, nobody does not own anything on the file system anyway.
I disagree with this resolution. I also believe that apache should run with it's own user. After all, 'gdm' and 'xfs' and other daemons do. For example, I have a secret key file that is shared between an Apache DSO (mod_jserv.so) and a seperate Java process, running a processing engine. To ensure secure communications between the two, they share a common key file. I have the permissions set to 600, owned by the user 'apache'. If this was owned by 'nobody', I would consider this a security hazard.