Error «Failed to become daemon» when starting ihttpd

Symptoms

When starting the built-in web server ihttpd, the following errors are displayed: «Failed to become daemon: Permission denied» or «Failed to start daemon».

Also, the panel often displays the «Server or network error» message.

Causes

Insufficient permissions on file /dev/null.

Solution

Connect to the server via SSH under the «root» user.

Make sure that the /dev/null file has the correct 666 permissions (or crw-rw-rw-), the owner-group pair is root root (or www-data root for Debian and Ubuntu), by running the following command:

ls -alh /dev/null

Also check that the file type of /dev/null is displayed as character special by executing the following command:

file /dev/null

If the file permissions and/or type do not meet the requirements, delete it and recreate the file using the following command:

rm -f /dev/null && mknod /dev/null c 1 3 && chmod 666 /dev/null

Once the file has been created, it is necessary to terminate all processes associated with «ihttpd»:

killall ihttpd

Now you can start the «ihttpd» service using the following command:

service ihttpd start