In a shared server environment that uses SuexecUserGroup, FCGIWrapper has to be owned by the user. If the user accidentally or intentionally deletes FCGIWrapper file, this would prevent Apache from starting up. Missing FCGIWrapper should not be a critical error. Instead it should be logged as an error during Apache startup One potential fix could be use yet another flag in FcgidWrapper Directive and if this flag exists, don't check for the existence of FcgidWrapper Another, much simpler one would be to use ap_log_perror(APLOG_MARK, APLOG_STARTUP|APLOG_ERR, apr_get_os_error(), cmd->pool, "mod_fcgid: Wrapper does not exist at %s", path); instead of return missing_file_msg(cmd->pool, "Wrapper", path, rv);