How to give a specific user access only to a specific folder and its contents?
Changing the ownership to a designated user will not change the users default home directory specified in passwd file. Anyhow, You may achieve this in different ways. But to make it simpler do this by opening up a terminal;
Firstly make a back-up of your /etc/passwd
file doing below;
sudo cp /etc/passwd /etc/passwd.back
Once done, edit the file (either with vi or nano), I prefer nano which is pretty easy;
sudo EDITOR=nano vipw /etc/passwd
Locate the created user. A line should reflect as below assuming the user is andrew
;
andrew:x:1001:1001:andrew:/home/andrew:/bin/sh
Replace /home/andrew
with /var/www/sitename.com
& save the file by hitting CTRL+O then enter to save & then CTRL+X to exit. This will direct the user to specified directory. Login as the user and see whether it points to **/var/www/sitename.com by also checking for any permission issues. If permission issue persists, then add the user to the www-data
group by doing below;
sudo adduser andrew www-data
EDIT: regarding the comment, I just had a quick search and found some more detail. Well, you may edit vsftpd.conf file located in /etc/
directory
sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf
un-comment (remove only the #
if its there at the beginning) the following line;
chroot_local_user=YES
Note: Just to be safe, make a back-up of the configuration file before you make any changes to it.
sudo cp /etc/vsftpd.conf /etc/vsftpd.conf.back
Source: vsftpd.conf on Ubuntu
Hope it helps!
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Vladimir Stazhilov
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Vladimir Stazhilov over 1 year
I used
adduser <name>
and created a new user, andrew. Now I want to give him read/write access only to
/var/www/sitename.com
and its contents.How am I supposed to do this?
I tried
sudo chown andrew /var/www/sitename.com
but he is still able to see all the folders and files under /var/www and other directories.-
zwets over 8 yearspossible duplicate of How can I prevent users accessing anything but their own home directory?
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zwets over 8 yearsI have marked this question as a duplicate of this question. Though the question is not identical, I think the answer fits quite the same.
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Vladimir Stazhilov over 10 yearsit works, but I still can access other folders
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AzkerM over 10 yearsthat is because the user is also in
www-data
group too.. -
AzkerM over 10 years@VovaStajilov, I had a quick search added few more in-detail by editing. I hope it may help you.