Ubuntu Linux Add a User to Group www-data (Apache Group)

How do I add a user to the Apache group called www-data under Ubuntu or Debian Linux server operating systems using the command line option?

You need to use the useradd command to add a user to the group called www-data under Ubuntu or Debian Linux system. This page shows how to add a user to an existing group named www-data.

Ubuntu Linux Add a User to Group Command

The procedure is as follows:

1. Open the terminal application.
2. Login to Ubuntu server using ssh.
3. Add a new user named foo to www-data group by running useradd -g www-data foo command.
4. Add an existing user bar to Apache’s www-data group on Ubuntu using usermod -a -G www-data bar command.
5. 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

How Do I Add an Existing User to 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 john www-data

Verify it with the help of id command:

id john

Add a New User to the www-data Group

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

sudo useradd -g www-data john
### set the password for john user ###
sudo passwd john

To verify new settings, enter:

id john
groups john

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

www-data Supplementary Groups Membership

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

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

To verify new settings, enter:

id john
groups john

Add a Existing User to www-data Group

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

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

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

Conclusion

You learned how to add a user to group www-data on Ubuntu Linux using command-line option. For more information see useradd, and usermod man pages online here or by typing the following man command:

man usermod
man useradd