trying to figure out what application is using port 80

[tomcloyd]

When installing Wordpress a couple of hours ago on my desktop, the installed tried to access port 80 but was rebuffed. The error msg said that I either didn't have permission (but I was doing an admin install) or some other process was using the port. I installed successfully to port 8080.

Subsequently, I decided I want a "multisite" functionality in Wordpress, but that apparently requires use of port 80. (Warning: this "port" stuff is 95% mystery to me!) So I researched the possibility of somehow getting access to port 80. Using the "sudo netstat -tulpn" command, I got this information about port 80:

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State       PID/Program name
tcp6  0      0      :::80                   :::*                    LISTEN      1125/apache2

(I've copied only the relevant command output.)

In the System Monitor screen I can find 7 Apache processes, one with process ID of 1125. It is a root process.

I also obtained this information, which I don't know enough to make sense of - or more importantly to USE:

sudo ls -l /proc/1125/exe 
[sudo] password for tomc: 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Feb 1 08:03 /proc/1125/exe -> /usr/lib/apache2/mpm-prefork/apache2

Where do I do from here? Is there some way I can locate that server (I well may have more than one Apache installation - I no nothing about Apache), and change the port it uses, or am I thinking about this all wrong?

Any help would be much appreciated!

[SteveRiley]

Can you recall, with as much detail as possible, the steps you followed to install Apache and WordPress?

[james147]

Apache is a webserver (one of the most popular ones as well). You can configure it to serve your wordpress site if you wish, or if it is not serving anything else turn it off (I forget how to turn off services on ubuntu, but it can be stopped with `sudo service stop apache2`). You might want to find out what apache is serving before you do this, just point to the computer in your web browser (ie, for your local computer: "localhost" or "127.0.0.1").

How did you install wordpress? and what are you using to `run` it? You may find out that apache is what is serving up your wordpress site.


Ports are simply a way for multiple applications to listen on the same address without getting each other message. Port 80 is used by web servers and http in general so it is the default port a web browser tries to connect to when you give it a url. If you want to change the port your browser tried to connect to use ort after the hostname/ip ie: "localhost:8080" for port 8080 (8080 is a common secondary port for http that is sometimes used when port 80 is being used).

[vinnywright]

you can stop apache2 with

sudo apachectl stop

but you should find out if it is running/serving your wordpress first as @james147 has stated

VINNY