ubuntu - Setting up VSFTPD permissions with Apache server

I have a VM running Ubuntu 10.10. I'm using Netbeans and uploading files to an ftp on the virtual machine. I'm using vsftpd.

The problem I'm having is, the owner of the folder /var/www is the user apache in order for the apache server to be able to read the files. So far so good.

But when I try to upload a file from ftp user user1 I'm not able to. I know what the problem is. My question is, how do I set up permissions correctly for the user apache and user1 to be able to write/read all the files in /var/www directory?

Answer

Create a group www-users and make it the group owner of /var/www. Then assign the users apache and user1 to the group and set the permissons on the /var/www directory to 775. This will allow user1 and any other users in the www-users group to read and write to /var/www; it will also make it easier to authorize other users to write to /var/www — simply assign the user to the www-users group.

Edit: The correct permissions on /var/www is 2775, which includes setgid so that files and directories inside /var/www inherit the group ownership of /var/www.