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.
