file permissions in debian

[brokndodge]

this sounds like such an idiotic question... but i've tryed everything i know and still can't make it work.

attempting to give user normal read/write permission to directory /home/www and it's children.

#chown -R www:www /home/www
#chmod -R 660 /home/www
#

as i read it 660 = rw-rw----

ls -la confirms all of this:

drw-rw---- 12 www       www        4096 2006-05-30 10:36 www

so i added user normal to group www

#adduser normal www
Adding user `normal' to group `www'...
Done.
#

and do an id to confirm it:

#id normal
uid=1000(normal) gid=1000(normal) groups=1000(normal),20(dialout),24(cdrom),
25(floppy),29(audio),44(video),46(plugdev),110(www)
#

the www group is listed at the end... just where it should be

so I su to test it

#su normal
$touch /home/www/test.html
touch: cannot touch `/home/www/test.html': Permission denied
$

someone please tell me what i missed... i know i can chmod 770 /home/www and write to it. but why not 660? it's as if user normal isn't a member of the www group.

i'm mostly trying to do this so that i don't have to su all of my commands. right now i've got to create my content then su root to move it all from my home directory to /home/www. it's getting to be time consuming as there is a lot of content. this is a production server so i don't want to leave it chmoded 770 even for a lil while.

[antidrugue]

I doesn't work because to "get pass" a directory you have to have the right to execute it.

[brokndodge]

i guess my thinking was skewed... I can chmod 770 and still only be allowing access to owner and group... geeze... i'm always making it harder than it is.

thx bruce lee

well, there is a tutorial for user permissions then.

[brokndodge]

ok... i chmoded 770 and i can touch /html/www at the cli but x still won't let me in. what is causeing that