Missing owner for domain, force lookup to root

Today we have a quick tip for a warning we saw in one cPanel box recently: after rebuilding Apache configuration, you may get this weird error message:

[email protected] [~]# /scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
info [rebuildhttpdconf] Missing owner for domain server.nixcp.com, force lookup to root
Built /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf OK

This error is related to the hostname of the server, but it doesn’t really affect any critical thing on your Linux box. But as it is a warning message, let’s try to fix it anyway. The quick workaround for this is detailed below.

How can I fix Missing owner for domain X, force lookup to root error?

1.- Edit your vhost template for nobody (apache) user fix this:

nano -w /var/cpanel/userdata/nobody/your.hostname.com

Make sure you replace ‘your.hostname.com’ with the real hostname of your server.

2.- Add this line at the end of the file:

owner: 'nobody'

3.- Rebuild Apache to apply changes:

/scripts/rebuildhttpdconf

That’s all, the error should be fixed in your cPanel server.

Further reading: cPanel forums 

About the Author: Martin Keler

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