RE: [users@httpd] Apache 2.0 on RedHat EL 4 - httpd process will not start

["Gary W. Smith" <gary@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: [users@httpd] Apache 2.0 on RedHat EL 4 - httpd process will not start

Kermit,

 

I know that it runs fine out of the box as we have multiple RHEL 4 servers.  Did you enable selinux by chance as part of the configuration?  I recall this being a problem some time ago for some of the applications.

 

Gary Wayne Smith

 

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From: Kermit Short [mailto:k_short@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 3:22 PM
To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [users@httpd] Apache 2.0 on RedHat EL 4 - httpd process will not start

 

Gary-

            I understand.  I’m not logging in as these users.  What I meant by saying that I attempted to run apache as the users “apache” and “www-data”, was that I specified those usernames in the httpd.conf file.  I have attempted to launch the process using either sudo or a direct root login, so when I issue the command “/etc/init.d/httpd start”  I’m doing so with uid 0.  Nonetheless, I receive the error message of  “bad username”.  Thanks for your advice, though!

 

Kermit Short

System Administrator

CCN-DC-1 D-Div

 

ph: 7-6360

pg: 4-5165

em: k_short@xxxxxxxx

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From: Gary W. Smith [mailto:gary@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 4:13 PM
To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [users@httpd] Apache 2.0 on RedHat EL 4 - httpd process will not start

 

Kermit,

You don’t lunch it under the non-privileged account.  You luanch it under root and then Apache will change the thread to run under the user your specify under the configuration file.  As mentioned before, non-privileged users CANNOT create a tcp listener under port 1024 without being root.  This is why you need to originally start the application as such.

Gary


On 1/23/06 2:19 PM, "Kermit Short" <k_short@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks to Gary and Keith for their input!  Indeed, RHEL 4 did create the apache accounts.  In an attempt to verify that the accounts were not created improperly, I manually created another non-administrative account and attempted to launch the daemon under that identity.  Both attempts failed (running as apache and www-data were unsuccessful and yielded the bad username error message.)  Still researching the error, but apparently it is an uncommon error as I’ve only found one post referring to it!
 
Kermit Short
System Administrator
CCN-DC-1 D-Div

ph: 7-6360
pg: 4-5165
em: k_short@xxxxxxxx <mailto:k_short@xxxxxxxx>