Allow users from www-data group to change owner of files under /var/www

gistfile1.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Resursively change owner to www-data
#
# Created: 2011-05-12
# Author: Viktor Stiskala <viktor@stiskala.cz>

LOGFILE=/var/log/wwwdata

## Add following line tu sudoers file (using visudo command) in order to allow
## users from www-data group to change owners under /var/www/
## Don't forget to check that this file is owned by root and has the 700 perms
##
## %www-data ALL=(root) /usr/local/bin/wwwdata
##
## (assuming that you have this file installed in /usr/local/bin/wwwdata)

for i in "$@";
do
        if [[ `realpath "$i" 2>/dev/null` != "/var/www/"* ]]
        then
                echo "Running this command on path in other location than /var/www/ is not permitted" 1>&2
                exit 1
        fi
done

# new loop to avoid changing permissions of only some of the paths entered because of the permission error
for i in "$@";
do
        chown -R www-data:www-data "$i"
        if [[ ! -z "$LOGFILE" ]]
        then
                echo `realpath "$i" 2>/dev/null` >> "$LOGFILE"
        fi
done