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Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 23:03:07 +0800 (WST)
From: Adrian Chadd <adrian@obiwan.aceonline.com.au>
To: Antonio Nati <A.Nati@cisco.it>
cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Apache and effective user id
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On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Antonio Nati wrote:

> Probably I'm missing something about Apache or about uid and euid.
> 
> I'm running apache, with user = nobody (= 65536).

Right.

>From memory, FreeBSD uses 16-bit integers to hold userids, and so that
gives a valid range of UIDs of 0 .. 65535 inclusive. 65536 is 1 too much,
and so "overflows" and becomes 0 again. :)

I've created a low-priv user called "httpuser" in the group "http" with
some nice low UID/GID and things work.

Have fun,

-- 
Adrian Chadd			| UNIX, MS-DOS and Windows ...
<adrian@psinet.net.au>		| (also known as the Good, the bad and the
				|				ugly..)