Question

FTP open for write: permission denied

  • Posted on January 2, 2015
  • TedinozAsked by Tedinoz

Hi I’m new to linux. I have followed v.helpful on-line tutorials to setup CentosOS 6.5, and I have successfully installed LAMP server, SSH and vsftp.

I have setup a second user with the same privileges as root and I can access the droplet via FTP (with FileZilla) as that new user and successfully download a file **but ** I can’t upload any file - whether a new file or an edited version of an existing file. I’ve been trying a simple upload to “/var/www/html” where the owner=root and the group=root.

The error message is: Error: /var/www/html/index.php: open for write: permission denied Error: File transfer failed

I’m sure it is something simple; Any assistance gratefully received.

Ted

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Andrew SB • January 6, 2015
Accepted Answer

Giving the ted user sudo privileges will allow it to execute commands as root, but it will not effect what files it can access over FTP. FTP is only concerned about the user/group that owns the file.

Normally the Apache web root on a CentOS server will be owned by the apache user not the root user. Adding the ted user to the apache group and granting write ACLs to the folder should allow it to access files in that directory over FTP.

chown -R  apache:apache /var/www/html/
sudo usermod -a -G ted apache
sudo setfacl -R -m u:ted:rwx /var/www/html
DigitalKrate • February 11, 2018

If anyone is using Ubuntu I used the following to resolve my issue thanks to @asb for pointing me in the right direction:

sudo usermod -a -G YOUR_USERNAME www-data
sudo setfacl -R -m u:YOUR_USERNAME:rwx /var/www/html

Hope this may help others. Thanks again to @asb

Phoenix21 • July 26, 2018

Thank you @Infused that solved my issues. However, everytime I create a new file on my server I have to do that, surely there is a better way?

Getting really annoying having to do that everytime haha

raffaelesicuriello • April 7, 2020

hi, I tried the command

sudo usermod -a -G YOUR_USERNAME www-data
sudo setfacl -R -m u:YOUR_USERNAME:rwx /var/www/html

but now I only access via ftp and I can no longer access via the web or network folder. How can i solve it?