Ashlar's questions

I have been finding it difficult to find the files I need on my system and could use some advice or documentation source. Out of the box using the file manager, I have a search box, but I cannot find settings for it and have no idea how comprehensive the search it is conducting is. Is it recursive in subdirectories? Is it searching the content of files, if so which kinds? etc. I can find very little online about the search engine or how to use it. Some info states that Tracker is included by default. If so, I cannot find it in the applications menu, although there is a file called kernal oops tracker. Is that the app? I'm sure there has to be a better approach than what I have found so far. Any help is appreciated.

Added: I come from Windows world, and my basic expectation is that a file search engine include:

• Search the contents of a file
• File type, dates, file size filters etc.
• A display that tells be what subdirectory a 'found' file is in as well as other relevant file info.
• Some basic documentation on how to use any of these capabilities if they exist

I am having an access problem to some files and directories that I have tracked down to the group assigned to access them.

When I manually change the name of the group in the properties/permissions menu for a directory from the default setting (MyGroup) to www-data used by my Drupal Website, the directory error messages I get are gone.

There are a large number of files and directories that require this change. If believe using chmod will change the owner which is set correctly and being new to Ubuntu, I am reluctant to experiment without a better understanding of how owner and groups work in the permissions settings.

What command changes the Group setting for a directory?

I am running Ubuntu on a Oracle Vbox in Windows 7 to develop a website. I have a set of directories that have owner read/write permissions but the group www-data does not have rights on the directories.

I tried the command sudo chmod 640 /path-to-directory to change the status, but receive a message requesting my www-data password. My owner level password does not work and I do not know what this password might be.

I tried passwd and receive the message 'changing the password for www-data and a prompt for my current password. When I enter it, I get this error message:

passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged

This error message looks more like some sort of problem on my system, but everything else works fine.