have changed User and Group in httpd.conf file to the non-root user that i usually log into.and i su - and made httpd service to start at startup (by service configuration gui). now the apache server is running fine at startup. Is this the right way of running apache under the user i frequently log into or is there a better way? i also want to run tomcat and postgresql what changes should i make so that there wont be any conflict between users running these different services.can i make these 3 services to be run as the non-root user that i frequently log into?and how do i check which service is being run by which user?

If you want to know what user a process is running under, open a terminal window (if you're in X then maximize it) and type:

top

From there you can see which user started which process.

I changed my httpd.conf so that it starts as user "nobody", and that is what top shows.

HTH

Here is my situation:

I have a very intricate web app written in java, and would like to put it on the www. The admin where I work want tomcat and apache to be running from a user account not the root account, and I am unsure how to do this.

We have:
apache: 1.3.26
tomcat: 4.0.3
java SDK: 1.4.2

installed.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.