harry dot news wrote:

> My problem is that the module seems to be quite disconnected from the
> rest of the system, and in my tests can't manage to:
> 1. find if an external file exists:
> access("path/file",F_OK) returns errno=13 (EACCESS)
> 2. send signal to a process:
> signal(pid,SIGCLD) returns errno=1 (EPERM).

That's basic security, and (unless you do something unusual and
probably dangerous) is the same in every apache version (and
indeed in its predecessor, the NCSA server).

Corollary: since you're converting a 1.x module, you can install
and test that on the same system as a control.

> The above problems disappear if I change in httpd.conf the user/group
> from apache/apache to some other account.
> I conclude that this problem has to do with the permissions of the
> apache user/group.

That'll be down to the setup on your platform (see Juha's reply for
a likely culprit).

--
Nick Kew