Finding out what user Apache is running as?

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

You can try the following command:

ps -ef | egrep '(httpd|apache2|apache)' | grep -v `whoami` | grep -v root | head -n1 | awk '{print $1}'

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

User: name="_www" id=70
Group: name="_www" id=70

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

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.

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

echo exec('whoami');

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

• 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.

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

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