"nobody" is kind of the opposite of "root". The root user can do ANYTHING, user "nobody" can do essentially nothing except play with resources that "nobody" owns (or has been granted access to).
The user and group that Apache runs under are set in the httpd.conf file. I prefer to change these to an apache-specific account myself.
Apache will spawn threads as it determines necessary to handle requests. The rules and limitations are definable in httpd.conf - if not supplied, builtin defaults are used. You can tune Apache for your server hardware and workload by altering these values - check the Apache documentation for details.
Since you're feeding Apache to
Java, chances are very good that the Java part of the system is where the overload is coming from. One way to tell under Unix/Linux is to use the "top" command. You may also need to check the
Tomcat and Cocoon docs for further tuning info.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.