[nzlug] File permission dummy questions

[Warren Boyd]

On 2006-08-11, at 02:18 , Sid Bachtiar wrote:

> I've been trying all sorts of commands for this but never got it
> working as I thought it should. Perhaps someone can help me out.
>
> I have a folder /var/www which is apache root directory. When I did
> "sudo chmod 774 -R /var/www", I didn't seem to have access to it even
> though my login is part of group root. All this time I had to sudo
> chmod 777 or otherwise I can't work on the file without sudo. I tried
> "sudo chgrp -R root /var/www" but it didn't seem to make any
> difference. May be I'm missing something here?

You can only change the permissions of files and directories if you  
are the owner.

The permissions your applying will allow read, write and execute  
permissions to the file, but in terms of modifying the ownership/ 
permission details you either need to be the owner or root.  
(Simplistically)

HTH,
Warren.