www-data as chown but still remain write access as other user(s)

Question

Hey all,

Currently I’m running a Wordpress multisite configuration. Here I’ve recursively set www-data as the owner of /var/www to allow Wordpress write access in it’s whole installation. All folders within /var/www have their permissions set to 755. Now I’d like to still connect to my server using SFTP to add/edit/delete files using another (sudo) user, which isn’t possible.

What would be presumed best practice to solve this problem? Thanks in advance! Lorenzo

Juraj Kostolanský · Answer

Hi, you can create a new group groupadd www-pub add your (sudo) user and www-data to this group usermod -a -G www-pub www-data usermod -a -G www-pub username change directory owner chown -R www-data:www-pub /var/www change permissions for the directory chmod 2775 /var/www the “prefix” 2 is a Set group ID bit, which causes the group to be copied to all new files and folders created in that folder. This does not work recursively, so you need to set it for existing folders manually find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} + # set directories to 2775 find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} + # set files to 0664

Juraj Kostolanský · Answer

Hi, you can create a new group groupadd www-pub add your (sudo) user and www-data to this group usermod -a -G www-pub www-data usermod -a -G www-pub username change directory owner chown -R www-data:www-pub /var/www change permissions for the directory chmod 2775 /var/www the “prefix” 2 is a Set group ID bit, which causes the group to be copied to all new files and folders created in that folder. This does not work recursively, so you need to set it for existing folders manually find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} + # set directories to 2775 find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} + # set files to 0664

Juraj Kostolanský · Answer

Hi, you can create a new group groupadd www-pub add your (sudo) user and www-data to this group usermod -a -G www-pub www-data usermod -a -G www-pub username change directory owner chown -R www-data:www-pub /var/www change permissions for the directory chmod 2775 /var/www the “prefix” 2 is a Set group ID bit, which causes the group to be copied to all new files and folders created in that folder. This does not work recursively, so you need to set it for existing folders manually find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} + # set directories to 2775 find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} + # set files to 0664

Atul · Answer

It works and allows you to create a file and all files created there from FTP is with username:www-pub but even after placing that file not allows you delete that file as in this case again it shows permission denied.

Any Suggestions

Juraj Kostolanský · Answer

Hi, you can add your (sudo) user to the same group as www-data and then add read/write/execute permissions to the directory (775) for this group. Something like this: http://serverfault.com/a/65416

Question

www-data as chown but still remain write access as other user(s)