[Rt-devel] http not starting, error...

[Tim Cutts]

On 21 May 2007, at 5:20 pm, Brandi L wrote:

> I'm running under the root user and root group. The owner is root  
> and root has read, write, and execute priviiedges. Everyone else  
> has read permissions. As far as I can tell, everything there should  
> be okay. Could something else be wrong here?

Well, that's a mistake for starters.  Your web server must *never*  
run as root (imagine what would happen if someone found a weakness in  
a web-form on your web server, which caused the web-server to do  
something it shouldn't - if it's running as root, it's game over and  
the attacker can do anything they like.  If it's running as a non- 
privileged user, the worst they can do, without a great deal more  
effort, is damage files belonging to that non-privileged user.)

In fact, you're probably getting this error because your web server  
almost certainly isn't running as root, but running as some other  
user, and that user can't read your root-owned web files.

Which version of Linux are you running this on?  Debian (and  
presumably Ubuntu) run their web server as user www-data, typically.   
I don't know what Red Hat et al do.

Tim