Why Apache child process runs as root

apache-2.2www-data

I am running Ubuntu server 10.10 with Apache2-mpm-prefork and apache2-mod-php5, I am using:

    User www-data
    Group www-data

in the configuration file, when executing ps -efH I get these lines:

    root      1497     1  0 09:43 ?        00:00:00   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
    root      1530  1497  0 09:43 ?        00:00:00     /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
    www-data  1531  1497  0 09:43 ?        00:00:00     /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
    www-data  1532  1497  0 09:43 ?        00:00:00     /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Apparently, a child process is running as root but why?

This also happened when I compiled Apache myself, I can't find a reason, and I do not know yet if this root-child process is serving requests or not.

Best Answer

any process that binds to a port under 1024 (privileged port) needs to be run as root to bind. So the main apache process binds to the port and opens log files and does a few other root only items.

Then it will spawn off the children to do all the work of handling requests.

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