permission denied when redirecting sudo sed output

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Redirecting stdout to a file you don't have write permission on

I'm trying to install drupal according to the instructions given in this tutorial: http://how-to.linuxcareer.com/how-to-install-drupal-7-on-ubuntu-linux and am stuck on a step:

$ cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
$ sudo sed 's/www/www\/drupal/g' default > drupal
bash: drupal: Permission denied

The permissions for /var/www/drupal are set to 777.

Solution

The tutorial does not use sudo and requires a root shell. You can get a root shell with sudo -i.

In case you prefer sudo, the redirection is handled by the shell and not by the sudo command. So you can't create a file in /etc/apache2/sites-available by directing the output as you did. According to the sudo manual, you should use a subshell like:

$ cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
$ sudo sh -c "sed 's/www/www\/drupal/g' default > drupal"