title: linux permissions on aws : basic
body: <p>I am new to linux and I am having a problem with permissions.  Quite a long time ago I had created an AWS EC2 instance from scratch using step by step tutorials scattered over the web.  I managed to upload an html website over there and linking the domain to it etc...</p>
  
  <p>Now that after six months I am connecting again to the EC2 instance using MobaXTerm SSH or SFTP session, I can't get to upload new files or rename old files etc.  I am using the regular ec2-user which from what I understand is quite a privileged user nearly as permissable as root.</p>
  
  <p>I connect successfully with the old key that I had created and I can arrive to the desired directory.  But I simply can't upload new files or replace old ones because I get a permission denied error.  I don't know why and how to fix.</p>
  
  <pre><code>Last login: Fri Apr 25 13:18:26 2014 from 85.232.210.97
  
         __|  __|_  )
         _|  (     /   Amazon Linux AMI
        ___|\___|___|
  
  https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/2014.03-release-notes/
  [ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 ~]$ cd ./var/www/html/
  -bash: cd: ./var/www/html/: No such file or directory
  [ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 ~]$ cd .
  [ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 ~]$ cd ..
  [ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 home]$ cd ..
  [ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 /]$ cd var/www/html/
  **[ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 html]$ mv index.html index_old.html
  mv: cannot move ‘index.html’ to ‘index_old.html’: Permission denied**
  [ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 html]$ ls -l
  total 164
  drwxrwxr-x  2 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Mar 27 16:03 css
  -rw-rw-r--  1 ec2-user ec2-user  5686 Mar 25 08:34 favicon.ico
  drwxrwxr-x  2 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Mar 27 16:04 font
  drwxrwxr-x 14 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Mar 27 16:18 images
  **-rwxrwxrwx  1 ec2-user ec2-user 48675 Apr 25 13:41 index.html**
  drwxrwxr-x  4 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Mar 27 16:19 js
  drwxrwxr-x  3 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Mar 27 16:20 nbproject
  drwxrwxrwx  2 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Apr 25 13:30 old
  drwxrwxr-x  3 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Mar 27 16:20 php
  -rw-rw-r--  1 ec2-user ec2-user 41041 Sep 17  2013 PIE.htc
  drwxrwxr-x 24 ec2-user ec2-user  4096 Mar 27 16:22 skins
  -rw-rw-r--  1 ec2-user ec2-user 30951 Mar 26 19:07 style.css
  [ec2-user@ip-172-31-47-208 html]$
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can you guide me? What to check? Where to start and continue to dig to sort the issue?</p>
  
  <p>I used WinSCP and SFTP also to manage file uploads easily but the permission issue remains unchanged.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you</p>