Ubuntu 12.04 Server: permissions on /var/www for newly copied files

Question

I ran the following commands to set up ACL on the /var/www folder in my Ubuntu 12.04 Server:

sudo usermod -g www-data abe
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www

I downloaded Wordpress using wget in my /var/www folder and unzipped the downloaded file:

cd /var/www
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
mv latest.zip wordpress.zip
unzip wordpress.zip

I created a new database and user in mysql and attempted to run the setup process through the web interface.

When I enter the configuration info in wordpress I run into the following error message: Sorry, but I can't write the wp-config.php file.

When I run ls -la, I see that the files are owned by my user abe, but they are part of the group www-data.

Would I have to run the chmod command every time I copy new files to /var/www?

sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www

Solution

just go to wordpress installation directory inside your www directory in terminal and give write permission to your web server which is running as www-data

sudo chown -R www-data wordpress

Comments

[Admin]

you can just give yourself permissions to the wordpress folder like so: sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/wordpress Just watch out. your files might be in a different path. Also, you could really just make this 666, and not 777 if you wanted to :)

[suspectus]

777 permissions would give everyone full access to the site material - not the most secure solution. 666 applied to a directory would prevent the user from entering the directory.