Give a group write permission to a folder
though the group owns it
No, group does not own a file in a sense that the permissions for owner
apply. Owner permissions apply only to owner - the user; and group permissions apply to the assigned group.
If a user is the owner of a directory why can't he write to it?
He can, except that ftpuser
in your case is not the owner.
Most likely, because you don't say it explicitly: root
or www-data
is the owner /var/www
of the file, and ftpuser
is a member of the group www-data
.
Even if the user www-data
and the group www-data
have the same name, they are different entities for the operating system.
Can a user of a group give the group write permissions to a folder owned by the group himself?
Again: folder is not owned by a group. If the group has write-permission, any member of the group can change the permissions to the object.
Where is the group defined in the command
sudo chmod -R 770 /path/to/the/directory
The second 7
refers to the group permissions (7
is a combination of read
, write
, and execute
).
Won't this give recursive permissions to all users?
It will assign (recursively):
read
,write
, andexecute
for the owner (first7
)read
,write
, andexecute
for the group (second7
)- no permissions for other users (last
0
)
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PaulB
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
-
PaulB over 1 year
I need help understanding how giving write permission to a group, works in Ubuntu. I am logged in as root and have a
www-data:www-data
andftpuser:ftpuser
(user:group
). I add theftpuser
into thewww-data
group using:usermod -a -G www-data ftpuser
Now my
www-data
group has two users.I then make the group
www-data
, owner of the folder/var/www
using:chgrp -R www-data /var/www
Still i have no write ability to the folder by a group member (though the group owns it) unless i give write permissions to the group. Now according to this best answer i also need to set the permissions to the directory using
sudo chmod -R 770 /path/to/the/directory
and this is what confuses me.If a user is the owner of a directory why can't he write to it? Can a user of a group give the group write permissions to a folder owned by the group himself? Where is the group defined in the command
sudo chmod -R 770 /path/to/the/directory
? Won't this give recursive permissions to all users? -
Scott - Слава Україні over 5 yearsWhy are you including
s
inchmod -R g+ws
? Did you meanchmod -R g+wx
?