How to resolve /var/www copy/write permission denied?

Question

I am a newbie in php, mysql. I have written a hello.php script, which I am trying to copy into /var/www directory (and will later want to open it through web browser). The problem with the same is that I am not allowed to save/write any files in /var/www despite me being the root. I tried implementing steps in this question, but I get the following error when I process the third line

find /var/www/ -type f -exec chmod g+w '{}' ';'
chmod: changing permissions of `/var/www/index.html': Operation not permitted

I know symlink is also an option. I would want to be able to write/copy files directly to /var/www/ directory.

Any suggestions on what is going wrong?

Answer 1

it'matter of *unix permissions, gain root acces, for example by typing

sudo su
[then type your password]

and try to do what you have to do

Answer 2

Are you in a development environment ? If Yes, You can do

chown -R user:group /var/www

so you will be able to write with your user.

Answer 3

Do you have a file in /var/www called hello.php already that has permissions on it? Maybe the system can't replace the file?

Although, root access should supersede any user on the system.

Have you tried applying permissions to the www folder?

If you can do this, try the following:

sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www

then do:

sudo cp hello.php /var/www

I only recommend doing this if you know 100% that it is ok to set permissions on the whole www folder. By the sounds of it, you are running on your own production server as most live/shared hosting servers are setup so that the www folder is not in the /var folder (instead it is in the home folder of the user).

Be VERY careful when doing anything with the sudo prefix though, you can seriously damage your system if you do it wrong.

Answer 4

Execute the following command

sudo setfacl -R -m u:<user_name>:rwx /var/www

It will change the permissions of html directory so that you can upload, download and delete the files or directories

Answer 5

Encountered a similar problem today. Did not see my fix listed here, so I thought I'd share.

Root could not erase a file.

I did my research. Turns out there's something called an immutable bit.

# lsattr /path/file
----i-------- /path/file
#

This bit being configured prevents even root from modifying/removing it.

To remove this I did:

# chattr -i /path/file

After that I could rm the file.

In reverse, it's a neat trick to know if you have something you want to keep from being gone.

:)

Answer 6

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www

Answer 7

First off, this has nothing to do with php. This is a unix permission issue. You need to login as a superuser ( sudo/su ) and type your password, then try that command.

$ su
(type password )
\# your command

$ sudo command
$ (type password)

It might also help if you actually specified the operating system you use.

Answer 8

sudo cp hello.php /var/www/

What output do you get?

Answer 9

If none of the above works, you might be dealing with a vfat filesystem. Use "df" to check.

See http://www.charlesmerriam.com/blog/2009/12/operation-not-permitted-and-the-fat-32-system/ for more details.

Answer 10

You just have to write sudo instead of su.

Then just copy the PHP file to the var/www/ directory.

Then go to the browser, and write local host/test.php or whatever the .php filename is.

Answer 11

Enter the following command in the directory you want to modify the right:

for example the directory: /var/www/html

sudo setfacl -m g:username:rwx . #-> for file

sudo setfacl -d -m g:username: rwx . #-> for directory

This will solve the problem.

Replace username with your username.

Answer 12

The problem is a privilege issue navigate to the var/www/ right-click in it and select open as admin then continue your work

Answer 13

First of all, you need to login as root and than go to /etc directory and execute some commands which are given below.

[root@localhost~]# cd /etc
[root@localhost /etc]# vi sudoers

and enter this line at the end

kundan ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

where kundan is the username and than save it. and then try to transfer the file and add sudo as a prefix to the command you want to execute:

sudo cp hello.txt /home/rahul/program/

where rahul is the second user in the same server.