LAMP lovers, HELP! I'm confused. This works fine with my apache2/PHP config: % pwd % /srv/www % chown www-data:webmins index.php % chmod u=r,g=,o= index.php % ls -l | grep index* -r-------- 1 www-data webmins 19 2012-05-24 20:05 index.php // runs on localhost Code (markup): BUT, if I add the user www-data (apache2 user, I think?) to the group webmins and change permissions to allow group read, like this: % chown root:webmins index.php % chmod 040 index.php % usermod -aG webmins www-data % groups www-data www-data : www-data webmins % ls -l | grep index* ----r----- 1 root webmins 19 2012-05-24 20:05 index.php // fails Code (markup): The whole thing fails and I get a PHP "failed to open stream: Permission denied" error. What am I missing? I thought that by adding the www-data user to the group webmins, and then giving webmins read access would be essentially equivalent to the previous config. Where did I go wrong? I must just have a misunderstanding. Please help! PS: It might be worth noting that I have the SGID bit set on /srv/www so that the group of any folder created under it is by default set to webmins. % ls -l /srv | grep www drwsrwsr-x 5 www-data subversion 4096 2012-05-20 08:03 svn drwxrws--- 4 www-data webmins 4096 2012-05-25 12:34 www Code (markup):