apache2 restart error of “bad user name”

Question

Basically, I cannot restart/stop my Apache server. I receive the following error:

aditya@aditya-desktop:/usr/sbin$ sudo ./apache2 -k restart
apache2: bad user name ${APACHE_RUN_USER}

Any idea as to what is causing this error and how to resolve it?

Answer 1

You don't say what system you're running, but,

% egrep '(User|Group)' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf 
User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}

This is the standard ubuntu setup. The user/group that apache runs at aren't set in the config file, but in /etc/apache2/envvars, which is sourced by the init script.

You should use the init script to restart apache, /etc/init.d/apache2 restart or if for some reason you can't, set your own envrionment variables and use apachectl.

Answer 2

First of all I'd try to use the apache2ctl command for the job.

sudo apache2ctl restart

EDIT after petre comment:

I think you are not using any wrapper, but trying to start the daemon running the apache2 bin directly, thus obviously not having any ENV variable being set

Answer 3

an error in the wrapper script - either user apache2ctl as instructed below, or search the script for the APACHE_RUN_USER variable and see what's wrong