# File and directory permissions Mautic docs not clear

**URL:** <https://forum.mautic.org/t/file-and-directory-permissions-mautic-docs-not-clear/12933>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [February 19, 2020, 6:35pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/file-and-directory-permissions-mautic-docs-not-clear/12933 "2020-02-19T18:35:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bulgin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/bulgin/32/1001_2.png) [@bulgin](https://forum.mautic.org/u/bulgin)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2020, 6:35pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/file-and-directory-permissions-mautic-docs-not-clear/12933/1 "2020-02-19T18:35:18Z")

</div>

**Your software**  
My Mautic version is:2.16.0  
My PHP version is: 7.2.27

**Your problem**  
My problem is:

The mautic post here:  
[https://www.mautic.org/docs/en/setup/getting\_started.html](https://www.mautic.org/docs/en/setup/getting_started.html)

states that file and user permissions should be:

```
The owner of the files is probably going to be `www-data` in a VPS/EC2/Droplet environment, and your user ID in a shared hosting environment.
In a shared environment, start with this:
cd /var/www/example.com/mautic
chown -R $USER:www-data .

```

However, depending on how a user logs into a system via ssh for example that would have an effect on $USER. If a user logs in as root $USER would be root, if a user logs in as a plain-vanilla user it could be anything.

So if it is root vs. plain vanilla user, what are the consequences of this difference?  
These errors are showing in the log:

Steps I have tried to fix the problem: read the mautic documentation which does not explain what kind user $USER is.