multiple owner of same folder

Question

I have changed owner of the /var/www/html folder to www-data. Now I want to grant ownership to ubuntu as well.

How can I do that? I don't know which group they belong to. I login to ssh by using ubuntu username and my FTP is also working with ubuntu, but now due to this change I am facing permission issue when editing a file via ftp.

Solution

Solution 1

Easiest way if only that one user ubuntu and www-data need access would be

sudo chown ubuntu:www-data <path/to/file or directory>

this gives ownership to the user ubuntu but still keeps the ownership for the group www-data.

So you control what ubuntu can do by

sudo chmod u<+|- permission> <path/to/file or directory>

and you control what www-data can do by

sudo chmod g<+|- permission> <path/to/file or directory>

or simply use complete permission masks (see example below).

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Example:
User ubuntu shall be able to read(r), write(w), execute(e)
www-data shall be able read(r), execute(e) but not write(w)
other users shall be able to do none of those

sudo chmod u+rwx <path/to/file or directory>
sudo chmod g-w+rx <path/to/file or directory>
sudo chmod o-rwx <path/to/file or directory>

or using a permission masks (helpful generator)

sudo chmod 750 <path/to/file or directory>

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Also interresting for your case might be the -R parameter for both commands, applying ownership and permissions recursively on the content of a folder.

For more information about options and parameters see
man chown and man chmod

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Solution 2

I would rather NOT add a user to a system functional user's group as suggested in the comments like

sudo usermod -a -G www-data ubuntu

as this is a really dirty way of granting a user permissions because he could also mess up things...

Instead if you want you could add a completely new group using groupadd (see man groupadd)

groupadd <group name>

add all users who shall have the permissions on the file(s) to this group

sudo usermod -a -G <group name> ubuntu
sudo usermod -a -G <group name> www-data

(for more information see man usermod)

and now set the ownership of the file(s) to this group

sudo chgrp <group name> <path/to/file or directory>

than you set the permissions as described before but this time only for the
group (read(r), write(w), execute(e))

sudo chmod g+rwx <path/to/file or directory>
sudo chmod u-rwx <path/to/file or directory>
sudo chmod o-rwx <path/to/file or directory>

or using the mask

sudo chmod 070 <path/to/file or directory>

Note that using this solution you lose the control over the different permissions for ubuntu and www-data.

Comments

[Rooney]

Can you try sudo usermod -a -G www-data ubuntu and check ?

[Panther]

askubuntu.com/questions/46331/…

[T.Todua]

dont take it, it was just my thought, ok. btw, can you mention two words about, why www-data shouldnt have write permision?

[derHugo]

I have four: It was an example. I only used it to show how the permission flags work. Ofcourse there might be use cases where e.g. the server should be able to write a file as well :)

[T.Todua]

thanks! ! last thing - if you could mention two words about -a and -G flags you used, could have been nice also for novices like me

[T.Todua]

and last's last thing: somewhere i've seen similar solution, but after creating a group, using gpasswd -a <username> <group name>. can you elaborate on that as well in post? and also, how it will be if there needs to be 3rd user, in solution1 ?