Red Hat

Hi there.

I'm setting up my first "proper" server using RHEL - in the past I've only had various test servers etc running, so want to make sure I'm doing things properly.

When installing s/w, let's say Apache, I don't want it to run as root, correct? Should I then create a new user "apache" (or whatever) and then add users to the appropriate group which I'll also create?

A test install of apache had all files within /var/www/ owned by root, which I don't think is correct?

many thanks in advance.

Apache will run as root initially, then spawn further processes under the Apache user (as defined in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf).

The RPM will create the Apache user for you.

It's fine that the files under /var/www are owned by root, so long as they're readable by the apache process.

Thanks. Will it create te www-user group too, or is that something to do manually?

I'd try but I'm away from the server now.

Yep, it will create that too.

The only things it won't do is chkconfig httpd on, service httpd start, open ports on the firewall or write the HTML for you ;-)

many thanks!