Duplicator plugin permissions failure

Hi guys,

Could you help me fix a permissions error from Duplicator?

Duplicator’s server compatibility report raised two permissions failures:

Required permissions:
Fail [/var/www/]
Fail [/var/www/wp-snapshots]
Pass [/var/www/wp-content/plugins/duplicator/files/]

Some of the files in the /var/www directory had the wrong permissions, so I set the correct permissions using commands like this:


sudo chmod 0644 /var/www/nl-logo.jpg /var/www/rabbit.jpg var/www/triangles.jpg
sudo chown --from=iain:iain www-data:www-data /var/www/*
sudo chown --from=root:root www-data:www-data /var/www/*


The /var/ww/wp-snapshots directory didn’t exist, so I created the directory myself:


sudo mkdir /var/www/wp-snapshots
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/wp-snapshots


Those were all the issues I could find. Duplicator still raises a permissions error when I try to create a package.

The error looks like this:

Required permissions:
Fail [/var/www/]
Pass [/var/www/wp-snapshots]
Pass [/var/www/wp-content/plugins/duplicator/files/]

The above paths should have permissions of 755 for directories and 644 for files. On some hosts the permission set requires 777. Setting items to 777 is a security issue and should only be set temporarily. Please avoid any hosting company that requires this kind of setup. See the ‘Duplicator Approved’ link at the bottom of this dialog for a list of approved hosting providers.

Also be sure to check the Owner/Group settings and validate they are correct and match other successful directories/files that are accessible. For more details contact your host or visit their help pages for more information on how they implement permissions and group settings.

I used ls to inspect the permissions and owner and group settings for all the files in /var/www:


iain@sandport:~$ ls -l /var/www
total 47836
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 177 Oct 9 17:30 index.html.old
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 395 Oct 14 21:33 index.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 19929 Oct 14 21:33 license.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 48579083 Oct 16 21:00 NL001.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 59741 Oct 17 00:40 nl-logo.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 99578 Oct 16 21:08 rabbit.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 7130 Oct 14 21:33 readme.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 60958 Oct 17 01:51 triangles.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 4616 Oct 14 21:33 wp-activate.php
drwxr-xr-x 9 www-data www-data 4096 Oct 14 21:33 wp-admin
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 271 Oct 14 21:33 wp-blog-header.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 3513 Oct 14 21:33 wp-comments-post.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 3164 Oct 14 21:33 wp-config.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 3177 Oct 14 21:33 wp-config-sample.php
drwxr-xr-x 6 www-data www-data 4096 Nov 3 16:35 wp-content
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 2718 Oct 14 21:33 wp-cron.php
drwxr-xr-x 10 www-data www-data 4096 Oct 14 21:33 wp-includes
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 1997 Oct 14 21:33 wp-links-opml.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 2408 Oct 14 21:33 wp-load.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 29751 Oct 14 21:33 wp-login.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 7715 Oct 14 21:33 wp-mail.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 9990 Oct 14 21:33 wp-settings.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 22135 Oct 14 21:33 wp-signup.php
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Nov 3 17:39 wp-snapshots
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 3692 Oct 14 21:33 wp-trackback.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 2722 Oct 14 21:33 xmlrpc.php


Everything is owned by www-data in the www-data group.

Each file has permissions 644 (-rw-r–r–) and each directory has 755 (drwxr-xr-x).

Even after uninstalling and reinstalling the plugin, it still raises the permissions issue.

The error doesn’t say what the correct owner and group settings should be, so I’m not sure if I’m missing something here.

My Duplicator version is 0.4.6.

My WordPress site runs on a Digital Ocean VPS. I installed WordPress by following their guide.

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Iain