Question

1

Unable to write to directory

rated 0 times [ 1] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 6187 / 2 Years ago, tue, march 8, 2022, 12:12:05

I am using Ubuntu Server 12.04

I can't write to a directory where my user should belong to the directory's group...

total 12

-rw-rw-r-- 1 www-data root   30 Sep 17 13:34 index.php

drwxrwxr-x 7 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 twentyeleven

drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 twentyten



dp : dp adm cdrom sudo dip www-data plugdev lpadmin sambashare www-pub

Here is the updated listing...

-rw-rw-r-- 1 www-data root   28 Sep 17 13:34 index.php

drwxrwxr-x 3 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 plugins

drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 themes

dp@acme:/var/www/stlit/wp-content$ cd themes

dp@acme:/var/www/stlit/wp-content/themes$ ls -la

total 20

drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 .

drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 ..

-rw-rw-r-- 1 www-data root   30 Sep 17 13:34 index.php

drwxrwxr-x 7 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 twentyeleven

drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data root 4096 Sep 17 13:34 twentyten

Please let me know if I need to provide more information.

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1 Year ago

answered 2 Years ago uccase · Accepted Answer

According to the listing above

drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data root .....

This means, that the first name www-data is the "owner" of the file, and the second one root is the "group" the file belongs to.

And since your user isn't in the root group (and it shouldn't!), you cannot modify the file, as only the owner and group have full access on the files.

To change the group of a file you need to use
```
sudo chgrp "new-group-name" file
```

To change the owner of a file you need to use
```
sudo chown "new-owner-name" file
```

If you want to change both, you can do it in a single command with:
```
sudo chown "new-owner-name":"new-group-name" file
```

My best guess is that you needed to use chgrp but instead you used chown