hi guys,

i've been following a guide on how to secure apache which is located here - www_securityfocus_com/infocus/1786 (replace _ with . - wouldnt let me post urls! )

it has been written for a freebsd machine, but i managed to follow it ok on a redhat one. however, when i get to the end of the guide, i try to run apache and it tells me that the user apache is invalid? any ideas what the problem could be? the user 'apache' has definatly been added because i checked with the redhat-config-users command.

any help welcome

thanks

mike

You sure you ran these commands...

groupadd apache
useradd apache -c "Apache Server" -d /dev/null -g apache -s /sbin/nologin

THis will add the user/group apache will run as. You may want to do...

cat /etc/passwd

just to make sure the user has been added to the system with the specs you used from the useradd command.

hi,

thanks for the reply. yeah the user has definatly been added to the 'apache' group. its just that when i run the...

chroot /chroot/httpd /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd

command, it says "httpd: bad user name apache"

i have copied the passwd and shadow files from /etc to /chroot/httpd/etc and checked them, they seem to be ok. any more ideas?

thanks again

mike

no, sorry... I have never tried chrooting apache before.