Hi I'm trying to get my head round how processes start and how they get their environment, especially env variables. Let's say you have two scenarios, one where a user e.g www has the following entry in /etc/passwd www:x:500:500::/home/www:/bin/bash and the other where the user has the following entry: apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin The main difference between the two that I would like to focus on is the that one user has a bash shell (www) while the other has no shell (apache). If both users are used to start an httpd process, then where and how do the processess get their environment variables, i.e what files are read in both cases e.g /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc etc.? Thank in advance Dan