Start a daemon as general user
 

I need to allow certain users (who do not have root access) to be able to stop and start specific daemons. Can anyone tell how I can do this in Linux?

Use sudo

More info here.

You can allow these users to use sudo.
For example to start apache, they would type something like:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache start

Use visudo to configure the permissions (this edits /etc/sudoers, try man sudoers first)