Ubuntu Permissions – Setting Up VSFTPD with Apache Server

permissionsUbuntu

I have a VM running Ubuntu 10.10. I'm using Netbeans and uploading files to an ftp on the virtual machine. I'm using vsftpd.

The problem I'm having is, the owner of the folder /var/www is the user apache in order for the apache server to be able to read the files. So far so good.

But when I try to upload a file from ftp user user1 I'm not able to. I know what the problem is. My question is, how do I set up permissions correctly for the user apache and user1 to be able to write/read all the files in /var/www directory?

Best Answer

Create a group www-users and make it the group owner of /var/www. Then assign the users apache and user1 to the group and set the permissons on the /var/www directory to 775. This will allow user1 and any other users in the www-users group to read and write to /var/www; it will also make it easier to authorize other users to write to /var/www — simply assign the user to the www-users group.

Edit: The correct permissions on /var/www is 2775, which includes setgid so that files and directories inside /var/www inherit the group ownership of /var/www.

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NGINX, FastCGI PHP with FTP Access, How to setup users/permissions

First things first, setup separate Unix accounts for each user. Associate those accounts with the FTP server. Although really, you should use Secure FTP via SSH. With newer versions of OpenSSH, you can setup "SFTP-only" accounts that are Chrooted into that user's home directory. Bam! Now you have users securely logging into their own home directories with no visibility to the entire file system. Files are written using their own user/group permissions.

Then, you can setup FastCGI to run with individual user permissions. It looks complicated, but there is a tutorial available here: How to setup FastCGI with Individual Permissions

This is probably the best approach (albeit the most complex) if you are trying to setup shared hosting for various users, especially if they are "untrusted" users. In this way, no one will be able to use PHP scripts to mess up each other's files.

If you can live with the fact that a user can maliciously access another user's files, you can continue to let FastCGI run as www-data. Then, when you setup each user's home directory, make the files owned by www-data GROUP. Then, set the switch bit in chmod (i.e. chmod 2770 instead of just 770). This will force newly created files to inherit the www-data group owner and allow FastCGI to read/write them.

Phew! That was long-winded. Let me know how it turns out by posting a comment here!

Ubuntu vsftpd – Default File Permissions for FTP Uploads

Here is the quick fix that satisfy all your requirements.

Setup a cron job, in which all you need to do is

chmod -R 775 /path/to/vsftpd

The cron job will kickin in whatever interval that you think necessary.

Best Answer

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NGINX, FastCGI PHP with FTP Access, How to setup users/permissions

Ubuntu vsftpd – Default File Permissions for FTP Uploads

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