[FIXED] Is there any reason that the apache webroot /var/www/html is set as root-owned?

Issue

I just launched a LAMP dropplet from Digital Ocean and am starting coding. When trying to create a new directory inside the web root it says

mkdir: cannot create directory ‘blog’: Permission denied

I can fix this by running chown -R user /var/www/html but I'm wondering if this will break things or if there's a better way of doing this. Thanks!

Solution

You have a variety of options on permissions, but essentially www-data needs read (and probably execute) permission.

I like to redefine the DocumentRoot in my VirtualHost definitions to use something other than /var/www/html, anyway.

For example, you could use /srv/www/sitename, and then assign permissions myuser:www-data to it.

There are also numerous threads on the DigitalOcean forums (and around the internet) about permissions schemes for web files. (e.g. Proper Permissions for Web Server Directory.)

Answered By - Jameson