Wget cannot write files at startup with a new user. How to fix it?

Question

I had a user account in Ubuntu named my_account . Then I created another account called test_account . When I wget in my_account , it works:

 my_account@my _machine:~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html#tab-datanode --2018-02-09 14:37:30-- https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html Resolving hdfs_server (hdfs_server)... 192.168.xx.xx Connecting to hdfs_server (hdfs_server)|192.168.xx.xx|:50470... connected. WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server certificate, issued by 'CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl': Self-signed certificate encountered. WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server certificate, issued by 'CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl': Self-signed certificate encountered. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 13320 (13K) [text/html] Saving to: 'webpage.html' webpage.html 100%[===================>] 13.01K --.-KB/s in 0.002s 2018-02-09 14:37:30 (5.33 MB/s) - 'webpage.html' saved [13320/13320] 

But when I do wget in test_account , it gives this error:

 test_account@my _machine:~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html#tab-datanode --2018-02-09 14:29:52-- https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html Resolving hdfs_server (hdfs_server)... 192.168.xx.xx Connecting to hdfs_server (hdfs_server)|192.168.xx.xx|:50470... connected. WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server certificate, issued by 'CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl': Self-signed certificate encountered. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 13320 (13K) [text/html] webpage.html: Permission denied Cannot write to 'webpage.html' (Success). 

I use test_account as superuser (i.e. su test_account ). So why can't you write files to the system using test_account ? And how can I fix this?

Answer 1

I have found a reason. It turns out that test_account not configured correctly when creating so sudo useradd -m -d /home/test_account test_account , which can be seen from the differences between the owners between my_account and test_account :

 my_Account@my _machine:~$ ls -la total 120 drwxr-xr-x 30 root root 4096 Feb 7 16:02 . drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 4096 Jan 28 06:44 .. drwxr-xr-x 4 1026 1026 4096 Feb 9 14:12 test_account drwxr-xr-x 23 my_account my_account 4096 Feb 9 14:37 my_account 

As you can see, test_account does not have an owner, but my_account . So, to fix this, I did the following:

 my_Account@my _machine:~$ su - root Password: root@my _machine:/home# chown test_account:test_account test_account 

After that, we see that test_account belongs to the corresponding group, and wget works:

 root@my _machine:/home# ls -la | grep test_account drwxr-xr-x 4 test_account test_account 4096 Feb 9 14:12 test_account root@my _machine:/home# exit exit my_account@my _machine:~$ exit logout test_account@my _machine:~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html#tab-datanode --2018-02-09 14:37:30-- https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html Resolving hdfs_server (hdfs_server)... 192.168.xx.xx Connecting to hdfs_server (hdfs_server)|192.168.xx.xx|:50470... connected. WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server certificate, issued by 'CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl': Self-signed certificate encountered. WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server certificate, issued by 'CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl': Self-signed certificate encountered. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 13320 (13K) [text/html] Saving to: 'webpage.html' webpage.html 100%[===================>] 13.01K --.-KB/s in 0.002s 2018-02-09 14:58:01 (5.26 MB/s) - 'webpage.html' saved [13320/13320] 

I just thought that I should publish my decision if someone, faced with the same issue, might stumble upon it.