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I would like to override the default umask and owner:group settings within certain directories only, without requiring root privileges, as that kind of defeats the purpose.

For example, when I touch a file in /var/www/ it becomes 0755 and owned by redsandro:redsandro.

I would like this to default to 0770 and redsandro:www-data for everything within /var/www/.

Maybe there's a better solution for this specific scenario. This seemed to be the only way to have both my non-root user and the webserver in full control over /var/www/. As the only user of this machine, I like the htdocs to be 'mine' without being root. Apache becomes fed up though when you take too much territory inside htdocs.

Here is a related question for the umask part where the answer is "no". But I am sure others have sought the same functionality, and I can imagine pwd based umask is available somehow just like git uses .git to store pwd independent settings that go up the directory-tree. Or down, I'm not sure if you call subdirectories up or down the tree. ;)

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Redsandro
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2 Answers2

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Partial answer:

Add the setgid bit on the parent directory:

sudo chown redsandro:www-data /var/www
sudo chmod 2770 /var/www

alternately:

sudo chmod u=rwx,g=rwxs /var/www
Zanna
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Redsandro
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Since you desire both user and group set this should work.

sudo chown -R redsandro:www-data /var/www

To change ownership.

Then do:

sudo u=rwx, g=rwxs /var/www

To keep that ownership change above permanent.

George Udosen
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  • Setuid on directories has no effect. – muru Nov 30 '16 at 06:45
  • @muru please I would need an explanation on this as I have done this with a folder on mu `Ubuntu Xenial` here is the result of `stat -c %A www`, drwsrwsr-x. Still any info will appraciated – George Udosen Nov 30 '16 at 07:08
  • you'll see the setuid bit in the output, you won't see any *effect* of it. – muru Nov 30 '16 at 07:12