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I frequently find myself encountering problems (usually permissions) when trying to setup a local development server. Or creating a new site (alias).

Very common problem is I need to allow www-data (apache use on ubuntu) access to all directories leading to the working directory.

Another problem is since I am logged in as my personal user jiewmeng, when I create new files, they are owned by me, and sometimes, apache cant read/write to it

How is your local development setup like? I am using Ubuntu 11.10 btw ...

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2 Answers

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I frequently find myself encountering problems (usually permissions)

That rather implies that you haven't got a permissions model in place.

How is your local development setup like?

I use the 'other' entity to allow access for the apache uid, the 'group' is for the people who need to deploy / edit files and the user is the user whom created the files.

So my files look something like:

drwxrwsr-x symcbean webdev  webroot/
-rw-rw-r-- other    webdev  webroot/a.php
-rw-rw-r-- symcbean webdev  webroot/b.php
drwxrwxrwx symcbean webdev  webroot/data
-rw-rw-rw- apache   apache  webroot/data/stuff.txt
drwxrwsr-x symcbean webdev  webroot/include/
-rw-rw-r-- symcbean webdev  webroot/include/def.php
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I am new to Linux, so I still learning as I go. So when I create new users, I should do something like adduser {username} --gid www-data to make the files they create under the www-data group (then apache can see those)? For existing users, I'd do usermod --gid www-data {username}? Is gid meant for that? I was wondering how can I have files I create under www-data – Jiew Meng Dec 23 '11 at 13:03
1  
For existing users, do not forget the --append option or you clear all groups – Lekensteyn Dec 23 '11 at 14:04
Oh then do you have all your files in web root. I think another problem I need to allow www-data I think rwx access on parent folders all the way down to the project. Perhaps in a production environment I can put all my files in web root, but in development, I think its better to put them in the data drive, or /projects. Also when using frameworks, I think its a good practice to have my application files outside webroot – Jiew Meng Dec 31 '11 at 3:41
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I'm using Solution 1 (the setgid method) described on How to avoid using sudo when working in /var/www? This has as advantage that I can read files created by Apache and the other way round.

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So all your scripts / content is writeable by the webserver uid? – symcbean Dec 23 '11 at 11:49
@symcbean It's readable only unless I manually chmod g+w a file or directory. – Lekensteyn Dec 23 '11 at 11:51

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