Hi Richard, Thanks for the advice! If I understand you, the user/group that the webserver is running as needs to have read access on files and execute on directories, but at the same time not be an "owner" of these files & directories. Is that correct?
Thanks again, Tom -----Original Message----- From: Richard [mailto:lists-apa...@listmail.innovate.net] Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 5:06 PM To: users@httpd.apache.org Subject: Re: [users@httpd] Change user for Apache web server to a non-privileged user? > Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 08:16:32 -0400 > From: Tom Hammond <tomino...@gmail.com> > > I have an Apache 2.2x server and would like to harden security so that > hackers can't get in easily to the Apache webserver. One suggestion > is to change the user/group for Apache to a non-privileged account. > > Currently the user "fpp" is the default user for Apache which has > access to the operating system via sudo commands. > > I entered these commands to create a non-privileged account: > sudo groupadd http-web > sudo useradd -d /opt/fpp/www/ -g http-web http-web > > I then edited /etc/apache2/envvars to change these lines: > export APACHE_RUN_USER=http-web > > export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=http-web > > I also ran this command to change user/group permissions on this > folder: sudo chown -R http-web:http-web /var/lock/apache2/ sudo chown > -R http-web:http-web /opt/fpp/www > > Finally, I restarted the Apache service with this command: > sudo service apache2 restart > > When I try to access the website on this server, I receive the > following message: > > Forbidden: You don't have permission to access / on this server. > > I've been scouring the Internet trying to figure out how to switch the > default "fpp" Apache user to a non-privileged account and can't figure > it out. Can someone shed some light on this? There's nothing about the "apache" user/group that inherently makes it privileged. It's just a standard user/group that the apache server (generally) runs as. What you do want to make certain of is that your DocumentRoot is not owned by the user/group that the webserver is running as, and that it is not writable by that user/group. The webserver does need read access to the files (and execute to directories) under the DocumentRoot. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@httpd.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@httpd.apache.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@httpd.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@httpd.apache.org
