what is the www-data account?
 

Hello,

I am new to Linux, and I'm trying to learn it to administer our web server. There is an account on the server called "www-data".

Is this account created by some program?

Is it possible to find out what the password for it is?

Thanks!

'www-data' is the user under which your web server runs. 'www-data' user has no password set by default.

Is www-data set up by Apache 2?

Is it possible to map a network drive in Windows to connect with the www-data account on Linux?

Thanks!

The acct (as states above) belongs to the owner of apache and would have been created during the apache install.
If you check the entry in /etc/passwd, you'll likely find it has /sbin/nologin as the default shell; that's fine.

Mapping network drives can be done by NFS or Samba, depend on exactly what you need to do.
We need more information/details.

Our website has a page that lets users upload files. I found that I could set the permissions on the upload folder to 755 but I had to change the owner to www-data for it to work. I have the website folder set up as a mapped drive on the windows computer I use to work on the website. The only problem is that I now can't drag & drop the files from the mapped drive in Windows - it gives an error stating I have to be logged on as www-data to do anything with the files in the upload folder. But when I try to map a drive in windows using the www-data account, it keeps saying the password is incorrect. I also tried mapping a drive using the root account, but it gives the same error even though I know I'm putting in the right password.

I can log on the Linux server fine with the root account using putty.