Linux groups - doing something wrong here.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2006-11-25 04:42pm

Ok, I'm trying to give myself write access to /var/www by using a group. If possible I'd like to avoid having to have it be my primary group as I'd like to be able to give other users access to it in future.

Anyway,
ls -l within /var gives me

drwxrwxr-x 3 root www 4096 2006-11-26 10:15 www

The last few lines of /etc/group

mark

1000: (group identical to my userID, created when userID was.)
admin

112:
files

1001:
mysql

113:
ssl-cert

114:
www

1002:mark (group I created, then added myself to with "usermod -G www mark")

Still no write access.

I get the impression I'm either doing something wrong or impossible. Can anyone give me some pointers here?

Edit: I think I may have just fucked my sudo access.
Edit2: Yes I did...and there's no password set on root....great.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2006-11-25 05:57pm

Well, to fix password boot using installer CD and use rescue mode to open a console, then do passwd root, set the root password and set sudoers appropriately.

You usually have to logout/login before new group settings take effect (or su to yourself).

What distribution are you using? Ubuntu? Isn't the default www group www-data?

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2006-11-25 06:06pm

Pu-239 wrote:Well, to fix password boot using installer CD and use rescue mode to open a console, then do passwd root, set the root password and set sudoers appropriately.

You usually have to logout/login before new group settings take effect (or su to yourself).

What distribution are you using? Ubuntu? Isn't the default www group www-data?

Yes it is, realised that after the fact. Hasn't been my morning.
Oh well, screwing this up several times in a variety of different ways is one way to become an expert I suppose.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2006-11-25 07:53pm

Oooh, fixed it.

Can I only have a max of two groups per user?
edit: nevermind, figured that out too...

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2006-11-25 11:41pm

Spyder wrote:edit: nevermind, figured that out too...

Isn't learning about your system and how it actually works and what's actually going on awesome? I agree.

EnsGabe · Post by **EnsGabe** » 2006-11-26 12:25am

For posterity, can you describe the resolution to the issues?

My gut says you logged out and then logged back in- permissions are from /etc/groups at login. The changed permissions weren't reflected until you logged in again.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2006-11-26 12:52am

Pretty much, I also needed to log in under recovery mode and put myself back in the admin group.