Red Hat LINUX 7.2 Reference Manual page 199

Section 13.3:Configuration Directives in httpd.conf
directives are in effect, your server listens at all of those ports. See the description of the Listen
directive for more information about Listen.
The Port command is also used to specify the port number used to construct a canonical name for
your server. See Section 13.3.39, UseCanonicalName for more information about your server's
canonical name.
13.3.24 User
The User directive sets the userid used by the server to answer requests. User's setting determines
the server's access. Any files inaccessible to this user will also be inaccessible to your website's
visitors. The default for User is apache.
The User should only have privileges so that it can access files which are supposed to be visible to the
outside world. The User is also the owner of any CGI processes spawned by the server. The User
should not be allowed to execute any code which is not intended to be in response to HTTP requests.
For security reasons, Apache will refuse to run as User root. Using root
as the User will create large security holes for your Web server.
The parent httpd process first runs as root during normal operations but is then immediately handed
off to the apache user. The server must start as root because it needs to bind to a port below 1024
(the default port for secure Web communications is port 443; the default port for non-secure Web
communications is port 80). Ports below 1024 are reserved for system use, so they can not be used by
anyone but root. Once the server has attached itself to its port, however, it hands the process off to the
User before it accepts any connection requests.
13.3.25 Group
The Group directive is similar to the User. The Group sets the group under which the server will
answer requests. The default Group is apache.
13.3.26 ServerAdmin
ServerAdmin should be the email address of the Web server's administrator. This email address
will show up in error messages on server-generated Web pages, so users can report a problem by
sending email to the server administrator. ServerAdmin is set by default to root@localhost.
Typically, a good way to set up ServerAdmin is to set it to webmaster@your_domain.com.
Then alias webmaster to the person responsible for the Web server in /etc/aliases. Finally,
run /usr/bin/newaliases to add the new alias.
Note
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