Linux – Add a directory to the Apache Web Root

Attempting to expand on @Zoredache's answer, as I give this a go myself:

• Create a new group (www-pub) and add the users to that group

  groupadd www-pub

  usermod -a -G www-pub usera ## must use -a to append to existing groups

  usermod -a -G www-pub userb

  groups usera ## display groups for user

• Change the ownership of everything under /var/www to root:www-pub

  chown -R root:www-pub /var/www ## -R for recursive

• Change the permissions of all the folders to 2775

  chmod 2775 /var/www ## 2=set group id, 7=rwx for owner (root), 7=rwx for group (www-pub), 5=rx for world (including apache www-data user)

  Set group ID (SETGID) bit (2) causes the group (www-pub) to be copied to all new files/folders created in that folder. Other options are SETUID (4) to copy the user id, and STICKY (1) which I think lets only the owner delete files.

  There's a -R recursive option, but that won't discriminate between files and folders, so you have to use find, like so:

  find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} +

• Change all the files to 0664

  find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} +

• Change the umask for your users to 0002

  The umask controls the default file creation permissions, 0002 means files will have 664 and directories 775. Setting this (by editing the umask line at the bottom of /etc/profile in my case) means files created by one user will be writable by other users in the www-group without needing to chmod them.

Test all this by creating a file and directory and verifying the owner, group and permissions with ls -l.

Note: You'll need to logout/in for changes to your groups to take effect!

If you're having trouble changing the group on the folder, make sure that you're root. You can't change the group of a folder or file unless you are the owner and in the group, or you're the superuser.

Ditch the admin GUI and open a shell. (Terminal, xterm, etc.)

chgrp www-data /home/morpheous/work/websites/testproject
chmod 2770 /home/morpheous/work/websites/testproject

# Set mode rwxrws--- the '2' sets the 's' sticky bit,
# which causes all files and folders created in "project"
# to inherit the same group.

(This may not be the best way to configure this specific app, but I think it's a reasonable guess. I'd also recommend moving that out of your home directory... that just complicates trying to keep your personal home directory secure while giving the webserver access to write to part of it.)

As for keeping Apache from serving up files in those directories, that's already done... your document root is defined as project/web. That only gives access to files at that point and below... the log and cache folders are already excluded.