Yes, privileges: I want the file serving to be performed as the user who has logged in, by fork()ing and setresuid()ing. Unless I run apache as root and handle requests in CGI, it won't be able to do that.
My intention is to replace ftpd with a DAV equivalent. As far as I can see (and I've been researching this all day) I'm going to have to take the hit of having my master parent process run as root, but at least my children can be setuid'ed when they get round to actually doing anything.
This is not just another webapp. I must authenticate system users, because my objective is to give them access to their home directories. This is identical to the requirements of an FTP server. In fact, the only difference is the protocol used.
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