30+ years of tech, retired from an identity intelligence company, now part-time with an insurance broker.
Dev community mod - mostly light gardening & weeding out spam :)
The usual principle is that of 'separation of concerns': ensuring that the web server is unable to modify any files (it only needs to read them back to the client), while a selected group of user accounts, possibly only your own, can create/update them.
Being based on Debian, Raspbian will run the web server as user 'www-data' and group 'www-data'. Thus the contents of /var/www/html should be readable by that user/group - it usually is by default since folders and files in /var/www/html have 'other' read permission already. To grant yourself rights to create/update files you can do a couple of things:
take ownership yourself, the easiest and probably most likely action:
sudo chown -R <yourlogin> /var/www/html
create a group with yourself and other editors in, permit members of that group to change/update files, useful if you will be sharing file updates with other users:
Another good principle is that of least privilege, avoid doing things 'as root', thereby reducing the risk that a mistyped command or malicious script you just grabbed from the 'net can do significant harm. Instead provide yourself (or others) with just enough privilege to get something done in a limited area, as suggested above.
Web developer at Greggs, UK with a proficiency in VueJS, Tailwind, and Storyblok, as well as other frameworks. I'm also passionate about web design, and mobile app development.
30+ years of tech, retired from an identity intelligence company, now part-time with an insurance broker.
Dev community mod - mostly light gardening & weeding out spam :)
Web developer at Greggs, UK with a proficiency in VueJS, Tailwind, and Storyblok, as well as other frameworks. I'm also passionate about web design, and mobile app development.
The usual principle is that of 'separation of concerns': ensuring that the web server is unable to modify any files (it only needs to read them back to the client), while a selected group of user accounts, possibly only your own, can create/update them.
Being based on Debian, Raspbian will run the web server as user 'www-data' and group 'www-data'. Thus the contents of /var/www/html should be readable by that user/group - it usually is by default since folders and files in /var/www/html have 'other' read permission already. To grant yourself rights to create/update files you can do a couple of things:
take ownership yourself, the easiest and probably most likely action:
sudo chown -R <yourlogin> /var/www/htmlcreate a group with yourself and other editors in, permit members of that group to change/update files, useful if you will be sharing file updates with other users:
sudo addgroup <editorsgroup>sudo adduser <yourlogin> <editorsgroup>
sudo adduser <otherlogin> <editorsgroup>
sudo chgrp -R <editorsgroup> /var/www/html
sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www/html
Another good principle is that of least privilege, avoid doing things 'as root', thereby reducing the risk that a mistyped command or malicious script you just grabbed from the 'net can do significant harm. Instead provide yourself (or others) with just enough privilege to get something done in a limited area, as suggested above.
This worked! Thank you so much - and your explanation is perfect, exactly what I needed.
If I might ask you one more question: in that last line, what do the -R g+w parameters do? Everything else I understand.
You're the best!!!
Hi Katie, glad that all worked :)
the -R means 'recursive', hence the change applies down through all files and folders from the starting point
the 'g+w' means 'group, add write', thus it permits anyone in a group to write to the files/folders this command applies to.
Ah, I understand now. I cannot thank you enough, Phil. :D