Add a User To Group www-data ( Apache Group )

The procedure is as follows:

Open the terminal application.
Login to Ubuntu server using ssh.
Add a new user named foo to www-data group by running useradd -g www-data foo command.
Add an existing user bar to Apache’s www-data group on Ubuntu using usermod -a -G www-data bar command.
Verify new modification on Linux by using the id command.

Let us see all commands in details.

How to see a list of www-data members

To see list of all members of a group named www-data, run the following grep command on /etc/group file:

grep ^www-data /etc/group

Sample outputs:

www-data:x:33:

How do I add an existing user named vivek to group Apache group www-data?

Simply run the following command to add an existing user to an existing group:

sudo adduser {USER-NAME-HERE} {GROUP-NAME-HERE}
sudo adduser tweenpath www-data

Verify it with the help of id command:

id tweenpath

Add a new user to the www-data group. In this example, add a new user called vivek to the www-data group, enter:

sudo useradd -g www-data tweenpath

### set the password for tweenpath user ###
sudo passwd tweenpath

To verify new settings, enter:

id tweenpath
groups tweenpath

The group name www-data is the user’s initial login group i.e. tweenpath has been added to www-data primary group only.

www-data supplementary groups membership

To add a new user called vivek to supplementary groups called www-data and ftp, enter:

sudo groupadd tweenpath
sudo useradd -g tweenpath -G www-data,ftp tweenpath
sudo passwd tweenpath

To verify new settings, enter:

id tweenpath
groups tweenpath

Add a existing user to www-data group
Type the following command to add an existing user called vgite to the www-data group, enter:

sudo usermod -a -G www-data tweenpath
id tweenpath
groups tweenpath

Above command will add the user tweenpath to the supplementary group called www-data. Use -a option only with the -G option.

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