Clarification please: write permissions /usr/share/nginx/www

Question

Hi

I get so frustrated with the lack of my knowledge ;)

I’m setting up a new droplet. Nginx is installed and the “Welcome to nginx!” shows in the browser. PHP is also working as well as mysql and phpmyadmin.

Now, I connected sftp using filezilla with a username and tried to upload a file. The file would not upload and the error:

Error: /usr/share/nginx/www/installer.php: open for write: permission denied

Now this makes sense because root is the owner. I recall issues (and did searches) that WordPress will not update unless the correct ownership is provided. Sadly, answers are a bit cryptic.

I tried:

chgrp www-data /usr/share/nginx/www chmod g+w /usr/share/nginx/www

This did not work.

Also, I know that there must be a way to add permissions to the “myuser” account so that I can transfer files AND have WordPress update.

Thank you for the clarification.

mobicons · Answer

Hi Kamal,Hope you can help me, I have the same problem I don’t have writing permissions to update some files on wordpress using Winscp, I’ve followed this tutorial to install wordpress “https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-wordpress-multisite-with-nginx-on-ubuntu-14-04 ” and works fine.I’ve installed wordpress under “/usr/share/nginx/wpdir”, when I try to run as you mention “sudo usermod -a -G wpdir myuser” I get the message “group ‘wpdir’ does not exist”. I have no user root instead I’ve created a new user “myuser” with sudo rights following this tutorial: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-14-04 I have another question: why it is important to move wordpress from: “/usr/share/nginx/wpdir” to “/var/www” Thanks

layneheiny · Answer

Thank you but I have a couple of questions for clarification.

First, there is no “wordpress” user or group. I temporarily used www-data.

Second, I moved the files to /var/www and updated the nginx config file.

I’m still not able to update WordPress in wp-admin panel. :(

Kamal Nasser · Answer

Your user does not have access to write to /usr/share/nginx/www.

You also shouldn’t store your websites in /usr/share/nginx/www. Instead, store them in /var/www and edit nginx to serve the files from that directory:

sudo mkdir /var/www
sudo chown wordpress. /var/www
mv /usr/share/nginx/www/* /var/www
mv /usr/share/nginx/www/.* /var/www

Add your user to the wordpress group:

sudo usermod -a -G wordpress youruser

Then allow group write to /var/www:

sudo chgrp -R wordpress /var/www
sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www

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Clarification please: write permissions /usr/share/nginx/www

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Clarification please: write permissions /usr/share/nginx/www