Chown invalid user group

Question

Replace as follows: root

chown -R www-data:jsmithstats/ chown: invalid group: `www-data:jsmith' 

I made sure jsmith is in / etc / groups and I also checked this as a check:

 groups jsmith jsmith: users sudo www-data 

this is on ubuntu

Answer 1

groups lists the groups to which the user belongs, not the group. If a jsmith group jsmith , it will be in / etc / groups. I guess you probably wanted:

 chown -R jsmith:www-data stats/