The FreeBSD Diary

By default, Apache runs as user nobody in group nobody.  That's not good.  So I'm creating a new user and a new group.  The group can be added by modifying /etc/group.  For more information on this file, try man group.

I created a new user by running adduser.  This user doesn't need a shell  nor does it need a home directory.

To restart httpd, I did a kill -1.  It didn't restart.  The log (/var/log/httpd-error.log) shows it attempted to restart.  So I restart httpd manually by going to /usr/local/sbin and typing ./httpd.

It complained about a virtual host in /usr/local/etc/apache/httpd.conf.  So I comment out that reference and try to restart httpd..  Now it runs.  I notice one instance as root and five as the user I just created.  According to my sources, that is normal.

I confess that when I set up this new user, I did give it a shell.  And a home directory.  I'll have to remove that eventually.