Adding an existing user to a group isn't working as advertized

[rtedbyers]

I do not know if I was misinformed, but it does not have the exected result.

I was told that in order for a developer to have read/write access to /var/www the user had to be added to the www-data group.

I have already successfully enabled the user to log in using ssh. When I log in as that user using ssh, I can change to /var/www, and I can read the only file there (index.html). However, I can not edit it.

I added the user to www-data using the following:

usermod -a -G www-data theuser

When I do so, I can see in the group file that the user name has been added to the end of the www-data record. But nothing else seems to have changed. The user still can not edit anything in /var/www.

What did I miss?

Thanks

Ted

[steeldriver]

iirc the change won't take effect until the /etc/passwd file is re-read - typically that's when the user logs out and back in but I believe the user can now force a reload in the current login environment by executing

newgrp -

[Doug S]

Has /var/www had the write permission for www-data added?
see: https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/server...ry-permissions

which basically says do this:

sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www
sudo find /var/www -type d -exec chmod g=rwxs "{}" \;
sudo find /var/www -type f -exec chmod g=rws "{}" \;

[rtedbyers]

iirc the change won't take effect until the /etc/passwd file is re-read - typically that's when the user logs out and back in but I believe the user can now force a reload in the current login environment by executing

newgrp -

Thank you for your reply.

Alas, that isn't the issue here as I had logged in and out as that user several times (that thought had occured to me), but doing so didn't change anything

Thanks again

Ted

[rtedbyers]

Has /var/www had the write permission for www-data added?
see: https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/server...ry-permissions

which basically says do this:

sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www
sudo find /var/www -type d -exec chmod g=rwxs "{}" \;
sudo find /var/www -type f -exec chmod g=rws "{}" \;

Thank you for your reply. That was what I missed.

But, I suppose I need to apply the same three commands to /usr/lib/cgi-bin, right?

Thanks

Ted

[Doug S]

Not exactly, as in the cgi-bin directory you would want the files to be executable.

[rtedbyers]

Not exactly, as in the cgi-bin directory you would want the files to be executable.

So that means

find /usr/lib/cgi-bin -type f -exec chmod g=rws "{}" \;

becomes

find /usr/lib/cgi-bin -type f -exec chmod g=rwxs "{}" \;

right?

Thanks

Ted