Wget cannot write files when run with a new user.

Question

I had a user account in Ubuntu called my_account. Then I created another account called test_account. When I do wget in my_account, it works:

my_account@my_machine:~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html#tab-datanode
--2018-02-09 14:37:30--  https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html
Resolving hdfs_server (hdfs_server)... 192.168.xx.xx
Connecting to hdfs_server (hdfs_server)|192.168.xx.xx|:50470... connected.
WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server's certificate, issued by ‘CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl’:
  Self-signed certificate encountered.
    WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server's certificate, issued by ‘CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl’:
  Self-signed certificate encountered.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 13320 (13K) [text/html]
Saving to: ‘webpage.html’

webpage.html    100%[===================>]  13.01K  --.-KB/s    in 0.002s  

2018-02-09 14:37:30 (5.33 MB/s) - ‘webpage.html’ saved [13320/13320]

But when I do wget in test_account, it gives this error:

test_account@my_machine:~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html#tab-datanode
--2018-02-09 14:29:52--  https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html
Resolving hdfs_server (hdfs_server)... 192.168.xx.xx
Connecting to hdfs_server (hdfs_server)|192.168.xx.xx|:50470... connected.
WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server's certificate, issued by ‘CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl’:
  Self-signed certificate encountered.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 13320 (13K) [text/html]
webpage.html: Permission denied

Cannot write to ‘webpage.html’ (Success).

I am using test_account as superuser (i.e., su test_account). So, why can't wget write files into the system with test_Account? And how can I fix it?

Answer 1

I found the reason. Turns out, test_account was not set up properly when created like so sudo useradd -m -d /home/test_account test_account, as shown by the differences in owners between my_account and test_Account:

my_Account@my_machine:~$ ls -la
total 120
drwxr-xr-x 30 root       root       4096 Feb  7 16:02 .
drwxr-xr-x 26 root       root       4096 Jan 28 06:44 ..
drwxr-xr-x  4       1026       1026 4096 Feb  9 14:12 test_account
drwxr-xr-x 23 my_account my_account 4096 Feb  9 14:37 my_account

As can be seen, test_account does not have any owner, while my_Account does. So, to fix this, I did the following:

my_Account@my_machine:~$ su - root
Password: 
root@my_machine:/home# chown test_account:test_account test_account

After this, we can see that test_account belongs to the proper group, and wget works:

root@my_machine:/home# ls -la | grep test_account
drwxr-xr-x  4 test_account  test_account  4096 Feb  9 14:12 test_account
root@my_machine:/home# exit
exit
my_account@my_machine:~$ exit
logout
test_account@my_machine:~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html#tab-datanode
--2018-02-09 14:37:30--  https://hdfs_server:50470/webpage.html
Resolving hdfs_server (hdfs_server)... 192.168.xx.xx
Connecting to hdfs_server (hdfs_server)|192.168.xx.xx|:50470... connected.
WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server's certificate, issued by ‘CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl’:
  Self-signed certificate encountered.
    WARNING: cannot verify hdfs_server's certificate, issued by ‘CN=abc CA3,DC=def,DC=ghi,DC=org,DC=jkl’:
  Self-signed certificate encountered.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 13320 (13K) [text/html]
Saving to: ‘webpage.html’

webpage.html    100%[===================>]  13.01K  --.-KB/s    in 0.002s  

2018-02-09 14:58:01 (5.26 MB/s) - ‘webpage.html’ saved [13320/13320]

Just thought I should post my solution in case someone facing the same issue might stumble upon it.