How do I copy files with SCP to /var/www?

Question

I need to copy files from my computer to my server's folders in /var/www so they are uploaded to my cloud. Here's what I try to do:

I open my computer's terminal and type:

scp /media/user/Files/Documents/documents.docx [email protected]:/var/www/documents

Notes on this step

• The hard drive that I am trying to copy the file from is an NTFS formatted drive. I use this drive to store all my media on, in other words it has no operating system on it. I use a separate SSD with dual boot for my operating system. Also, this drive is mounted when I do this.
• 'ubuntu' is the actual username of the server I am trying to copy to.

Then it asks me for that computers password and then I get:

scp: /var/www/documents/documents.docx: Permission denied

What's wrong here?

Other Notes

• After much Googling, I found it may be a permission issue, so I tried the various solutions with no luck. The most common solution I tried was adding a user to the group. I would add the server's user (ubuntu) to the group, but that didn't help. Am I supposed to add my computer's username to the group? If so, do I add the stuff before the colon, after the colon, or both?
• I understand that one method to get around this would be to copy the files to my server's home directory, and then cp them to /var/www through SSH, but I would rather not do that because its an extra step.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank You!

Solution

I think it is a permissions issue indeed. The user you are logging in to the server with must have write permissions to the directory you are copying the file into. In this case /var/www/documents.

Try to log in as ubuntu and do something like echo test > /var/www/documents.

If you get the same error as before, you should add the ubuntu user to whatever group that documents directory belogs. You can check that by doing for example:

ls -la /var/www

The fourth column shows the group name. Then you can do:

usermod -G web ubuntu

(change web with the real group name you get)

Comments

[Marcin Kaminski]

I think your "cloud" is oddly shaped.