[SOLVED] chown: invalid user 'www-data:www-data'

thund3rstruck · 03-20-2013, 09:53 PM

Really? What's the deal...

Code:

sudo chown www–data:www-data /var/svn/mysoft
  chown: invalid user: `www–data:www-data'

Code:

id www-data
  uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) groups=33(www-data)

Code:

cat /etc/passwd | grep www
  www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/bin/sh

Code:

cat /etc/group | grep www
  www-data:x:33:

Code:

ps aux | grep apache2
root      4922  0.0  0.3 311300 11224 ?        Ss   22:33   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data  4927  0.0  0.1 311324  6132 ?        S    22:33   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data  4928  0.0  0.1 311324  6132 ?        S    22:33   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data  4929  0.0  0.1 311324  6132 ?        S    22:33   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data  4930  0.0  0.1 311324  6132 ?        S    22:33   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data  4931  0.0  0.1 311324  6132 ?        S    22:33   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

What's the deal here. The account is obviously there; why can't Ubuntu resolve it?

thund3rstruck · 03-20-2013, 10:12 PM

Bizarre; a reboot seems to have solved the problem. I think this had something to do with having just uninstalled nginx; which was also using www-data.

chrism01 · 03-21-2013, 12:53 AM

If you look very carefully, the first 'dash/hyphen' is twice as long as the second... either its really 2 ie '--' or maybe you've copy/pasted from a doc of some kind, maybe even MS

Code:

www–data:www-data

thund3rstruck · 03-21-2013, 01:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrism01

If you look very carefully, the first 'dash/hyphen' is twice as long as the second... either its really 2 ie '--' or maybe you've copy/pasted from a doc of some kind, maybe even MS

Code:

www–data:www-data

Hm...you could be on to something! I'm not willing to concede yet but it is likely that I fat-fingered that in the terminal with a double dash.

Great eyes!

chrism01 · 03-21-2013, 01:53 AM

Try checking your bash history ?