Centos – Apache running as root instead of user specified in httpd.conf

apache-2.2centospermissionsWordpress

I'm trying to enable WordPress to upload files to the wp-content folder without setting permissions for the folder to 777. However, I'm having some difficulties.

The group and user set for the wp-content folder match the group and user Apache is configured to be using in httpd.conf. However, when I run the below command, it appears that Apache is actually running as root rather than the user specified in httpd.conf.

httpd.conf Configuration

User xxx
Group yyy

Command Run to Determine User Apache is Running As

ps aux | grep httpd

Output from the above command

513       1294  0.4  1.4 316420 54864 ?        S    08:30   0:06 /usr/sbin/httpd

513 is the correct UID for user xxx, so that appears correctly. However, I'm still not able to upload files within WordPress without setting permissions for the wp-content folder to 777.

Can somebody tell me what the issue is here?

Best Answer

Apache always needs to start as root, then it uses setuid to switch to user context of specified user in httpd.conf.

Without root (uid = 0) you can not create listening socket on privileged ports (below 1024)

For details read this documents:

From first link:

# ps -ef | grep -i http | awk '{print $1}'
root
apache
apache
apache
apache
apache
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