Basic question about groups
 

I need to give the fwlogwatch firewall monitoring script (run as a cgi by the web server - user www-data) access to /var/log/messages, which is owned by root, belongs to the adm group, and has mode 620. The docs say to add www-data to the adm group, but it still doesn't work. Do I need do have the script do a 'newgrp'? What is the right way to do this? It is a Debian (Sarge / Etch) system.

as it stands now, with your permissions you have:
6 (owner) = read/write
2 (group) = write
0 (others) = nothing

now, is the problem with trying to read/execute the file? if so, change the permission to something else to allow group to do what you need to with the file.

Permissions:
1=execute
2=write
4=read

to find out what octal number to use, just add up whatever attributes you want, ie: write/execute = 1 + 2 = 3

Typo; the permissions are 640 (-rw-r-----). I want to read the file (which the group [adm] is allowed to do).