Re: [Leap 16.0] apache2 group wwwrun or www?

 On Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:13:44 +0200, [email protected] wrote:

> Hi *,

Does that mean "Hi, all-of-you-peoples" ?  :-)

> on my Leap 16.0 web server apache is running as user wwwrun and group www, but there also exists a group named wwwrun.
> Lately I got a few problems with Nextcloud, when updating modules, because some files had wwwrun:wwwrun set.
> So I tried to find out, what the proper group settings might be, but really got confused:
>
> /etc/apache2/uid.conf
>
>         User wwwrun
>         Group www
>
> /etc/passwd
>
> wwwrun:x:474:474:WWW daemon apache:/var/lib/wwwrun:/usr/sbin/nologin
>
> /etc/group
>
> www:x:479:wwwrun
> wwwrun:!:474:
>
> /usr/lib/sysusers.d/system-user-wwwrun.conf
>
> # Type Name ID GECOS [HOME]
> g www -
> u wwwrun - "WWW daemon apache" /var/lib/wwwrun
> m wwwrun www
>
> What is correct - www or wwwrun?
> And why is it different in those configs?

The two *.conf files seem consistent, although I haven't checked
documentation for them.  Don't they both indicate User: wwwrun and
Group: www ?

So /etc/group has both www and wwwrun, group www with one user, wwwrun,
and group wwwrun with no members (Is a user of the same name automatically
a member of the group?).

But /etc/passwd shows user wwwrun as having primary group wwwrun with
GID == UID.  This is consistent with the usergroups scheme (intended
for regular users, not system users) where a group of the same name
and ID is created for each user.

Apache with its uid.conf does not want that.  It specifies group www.

So is the wwwrun group a spurious creation?  If 'useradd' creates a new
user, and no group is specified, then if the USERGROUPS_ENAB parameter
in one of the login.defs files is set to "yes", a group of the same
name and ID is also created.  Check the configuration:

 # find {,/usr}/etc/login.defs* ! -type d -print -exec grep -h -B 8 -e USERGROUPS_ENAB -- {} \;

But for Apache, group creation should not be left to a default, so the
setting for USERGROUPS_ENAB should not matter.
-- 
Robert Webb