288

I want to secure a file upload directory on my server as described beautifully here, but I have one problem before I can follow these instructions. I don't know what user Apache is running as.

I've found a suggestion that you can look in httpd.conf and there will be a "User" line, but there is no such line in my httpd.conf file, so I guess Apache is running as the default user. I can't find out what that is, though.

So, my question is (are):

  • how do I find out what the default user is
  • do I need to change the default user
  • if the answer is yes and I change the default user by editing httpd.conf, is it likely to screw anything up?

Thanks!

6
  • 17
    why has this question been downvoted? Yes, it's been updated as it has been answered elswhere, but I see no need to down vote? It's a perfectly good question? Perhaps our down voter would care to add a constructive comment regarding this?
    – Bryan
    Mar 24, 2010 at 16:44
  • 2
    You might want to post that update as an answer, and accept it, as you are currently in the Unanswered queue. Apr 5, 2010 at 9:40
  • 12
    +1 for being told off on StackOverflow; some users seem insistent on running off new users
    – wruckie
    Jun 7, 2014 at 18:35
  • 1
    Linked question does not exist any more
    – pal4life
    Aug 11, 2014 at 22:28
  • The next question: what to do because its one of two users, like root and www-data. How do you give the "right" Apache group a permission to access something?
    – user145545
    May 12, 2015 at 21:38

15 Answers 15

298

ps aux | egrep '(apache|httpd)' typically will show what apache is running as.

Usually you do not need to change the default user, "nobody" or "apache" are typically fine users. As long as its not "root" ;)

edit: more accurate command for catching apache binaries too

9
  • 62
    Yup, or it'll be www-data on Ubuntu.
    – gravyface
    Apr 19, 2010 at 23:55
  • 12
    ...and Debian. :)
    – cubuspl42
    Jan 28, 2014 at 13:07
  • 14
    That command shows me a list of things, most from apache but 1 from root too.
    – User
    Mar 1, 2015 at 3:40
  • 8
    I have 3 processes (/usr/sbin/apache2 -k start), one's user is root and the other two www-data. Should I be concerned?
    – zundi
    Feb 22, 2017 at 18:33
  • 12
    @zundi, the service starts as root in order to do things like bind to reserved ports (e.g. 80 and 443). Then it starts whatever the configured number of processes are, to do the web-server work, and any other tasks, as the defined users. That way requests are being handled by non-privileged processes. You will notice the the parent ID (PPID) is the same for all of the other processes. That idea with be the PID for that one process running as root.
    – Kevin
    Aug 15, 2017 at 18:52
69

You can try the following command:

ps -ef | egrep '(httpd|apache2|apache)' | grep -v `whoami` | grep -v root | head -n1 | awk '{print $1}'
3
  • 3
    I love this answer, better (more generic) than the most upvoted answer. Thanks
    – pgr
    Aug 28, 2018 at 17:24
  • CHECK THIS ANSWER instead more voted one. Apr 29, 2022 at 22:41
  • 4
    You're litterally hidding lines from root user, which means that if apache is running as root, well, it doesnt show anything. Same for the current logged user.
    – 4wk_
    Jun 20, 2022 at 14:37
56

Use apachectl -S, which will show something Apache user and group, something like this:

User: name="_www" id=70
Group: name="_www" id=70
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  • 2
    Thanks, on my mac i see that apache is running as '_www'.
    – Mercury
    Oct 19, 2016 at 14:01
  • 4
    This is a good answer, because it is the one command that tells you a lot more about your running web server and presents it in a comprehensive way.
    – kontur
    Sep 5, 2019 at 8:08
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    Oddly, on the Mac, although it shows as '_www', you use 'www' without the underscore for various commands (notably chown). By the way, this varies according to version of MacOs/Apache/Apache package. It's '_www' on my macOs Big Sur with Apache 2.4.38 from MacPorts. It used to be 'staff' on older builds, and I think it's different if you use Homebrew.
    – xgretsch
    Oct 5, 2021 at 15:51
15

According to the ubuntuforums.org, on Ubuntu the default user for apache2 is www-data.

Seen to be true on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy.


From Lars Noodén on the above forum.

To be sure what [the user] is really set to, check the actual configuration files. The umbrella file, apache2.conf will have something like the following,

User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}

That is a reference to environment variables set in /etc/apache2/envvars. mod_suexec also allows scripts to be run as yet a different user and group.

To find any virtual hosts, which may use alternate users, groups, or both, check the configurations.

$ egrep "^User|^Group|^SuexecUserGroup" /etc/apache2/apache2.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/*.conf

For Red Hat based distributions it would be (usually its user running httpd is apache):

$ egrep "^User|^Group|^SuexecUserGroup" /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/*.conf
12

I know that this is an old post, but it is still listed as unanswered, so I will make a suggestion. If you can't find which user or group Apache is running as, perhaps try opening the httpd.conf file. There should be an entry there for "User" and "Group". Not only can you see which user Apache is supposed to be running as, but you can change it if you feel the need to do so.

11

You can include a line of code in your PHP script:

echo exec('whoami');
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  • 8
    Watch out here, this shows the user that PHP runs under, not the Apache user. If using mod_php these are the same but if, as is now very common, you're using something else (like php_fpm) they can easily be different.
    – benz001
    Jul 31, 2014 at 2:29
5

This code will - more or less - alphabetically list all the non-root users running processes containing apache (or whose name contains apache)

ps aux | grep -v root | grep apache | cut -d\  -f1 | sort | uniq
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  • 1
    The list will probably include users who are running processes like 'grep apache', such as your fine self.
    – mwfearnley
    Jul 15, 2016 at 13:58
4
  • To find out the user, you can simply use ps aux | grep apache while it is running.
  • You don't need to, but if Apache is running as root there are security issues.
  • Thirdly, changing the user of Apache will change his rights to access some directories. You need to make sure that /var/www (or wherever you have your websites) is accessible to the new user and group.
  • On the systems I have looked at, apache was always installed using apache:apache (or similar) as user and group, so it should probably already be set like that.

NOTE: This is the same answer I gave on Stackoverflow.

3

Or you can check the apache configuration file and look for the owner & group.

3

An alternative approach, at least for Debian/Ubuntu-based distros, is to use the same method Apache does to set its user and group: source /etc/apache2/envvars!

$ echo "$(source /etc/apache2/envvars && echo "$APACHE_RUN_GROUP")"
www-data

If you want to get fancy, you can suppress errors if the file is not found, and provide a default value:

$ apacheuser=$(
     source /fail/etc/apache2/envvars 2>/dev/null &&
     echo "$APACHE_RUN_GROUP" ||
     echo nobody  
)
$ echo "$apacheuser"
nobody
2

As suggested by Noyo here:

APACHE_USER=$(ps axho user,comm|grep -E "httpd|apache"|uniq|grep -v "root"|awk 'END {if ($1) print $1}')

And then:

echo $APACHE_USER
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  • 1
    Get the user (ubuntu command-line): echo $APACHE_USER
    – Jadeye
    Oct 22, 2014 at 9:07
2

I found most of the solutions offered here are system- or configuration- specific (in particular, most of the solutions do not work at all on MacOS) and a few rely on the user knowing where Apache's configuration files are in the first place...

So I cheat a bit and let Apache itself tell me what's what.

The simple command apachectl -S will tell you what you need to know about a running instance of Apache, and its results can be parsed fairly easily. Here's my solution, which I use at the top of a few bash scripts to determine a variety of things I might need at any given time...

# Store the results so we don't have to keep calling apachetl...
astatus=`apachectl -S`

# Now grab whatever you want from the result... 
HTTPD_ROOT_DIR=$(expr "`echo "$astatus" | grep ServerRoot`" : ".*\"\(.*\)\".*")
HTTPD_DOC_DIR=$(expr "`echo "$astatus" | grep \"Main DocumentRoot\" `" : ".*\"\(.*\)\".*")
HTTPD_USER=$(expr "`echo "$astatus" | grep \"User:.*name=\" `" : ".*\"\(.*\)\".*")
HTTPD_GROUP=$(expr "`echo "$astatus" | grep \"Group:.*name=\" `" : ".*\"\(.*\)\".*")

These values can then be used as such:

echo $HTTPD_ROOT_DIR // /etc/httpd
echo $HTTPD_DOC_DIR  // /var/www
echo $HTTPD_USER     // www-data
echo $HTTPD_GROUP    // www-data
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  • You can use the operator <<< to pass a string as stdin to a process: grep b <<<$'a\nb\nc\n'
    – ceving
    Jan 21, 2020 at 14:33
1

Use lsof and pass the port apache is listen to as an argument. See the USER column for the user appache is running as.

# lsof -i :80
COMMAND     PID   USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
httpd     21058   root    4u  IPv6  74730      0t0  TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd     21111 www-data    4u  IPv6  74730      0t0  TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd     24915 www-data    4u  IPv6  74730      0t0  TCP *:http (LISTEN)
1
  • lsof might be slow when you have a few 100k open filehandles and/or a quite busy server. Oct 17, 2018 at 10:51
0

I found this command in CakePHP docs.

HTTPDUSER=`ps aux | grep -E '[a]pache|[h]ttpd|[_]www|[w]ww-data|[n]ginx' | grep -v root | head -1 | cut -d\  -f1`

Now HTTPDUSER holds the username of the user who runs the server, echo $HTTPDUSER in my case outputs www-data –using rlerdorf/php7dev.

0

This is what I use right now:

apachectl -t -D DUMP_RUN_CFG 2>/dev/null |
sed -n '/^User/s/.*name="\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p'

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