Debian USER with read/write permissions for www

Question

I have a Debian Squeeze server with an EasySCP admin panel. This panel set domain folders in /var/www/virtual/domain.name

Every domain has a unique ID of vu2000, vu2001... Ownership of the files under domain folders is vu2000:vu2000 on domain1, vu2001:vu2001 on domain2 and so on. Everything works great (apache, root access, etc.).

I need a non-root SSH/SCP user who can read and write all domain folders (recursively) under /var/www/virtual (copy, create files, etc.). Only root is able to do that, I do not want to give somebody root access because of many security risks.

Which group do I have to set for the user to be able to access and change files in domain folders? With www-data group this user can read, but cannot write. How do I set this up?

Answer 1

You can use ACL using setacl command

suku@ubuntu-vm:~$ ls -ld /test
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 root root 4096 Jan  4 20:55 /test

suku@ubuntu-vm:~$ sudo setfacl --recursive -m u:test:rwx /test

suku@ubuntu-vm:/test$ getfacl /test
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: test
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rwx
user:test:rwx
group::r-x
mask::rwx
other::r-x

suku@ubuntu-vm:~$ sudo su - test
test@ubuntu-vm:~$ touch /test/a

test@ubuntu-vm:~$ ls -l /test/ 
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 test test 0 Jan  4 20:58 a

man page : http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/gutsy/man1/setfacl.1.html

If you don't have setfacl command, you can install it using following in ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install acl