I have recently installed Apache2 on my powermac G4 running ubuntu 9.10 and that works great. I want to be able to publish my site via FTP though... i cant get that to work... what do i need to install for this to work? also whenever i put a new file in there, it gives it permissions that are owned by root, not too ideal for a web server!
Any help would be greatly apreciated

There are a variety of ftp servers for MacOS, but the bigger question would be are you interested in a GUI management interface or commandline like apache.

List of FTP Servers by OS

If you like commandline I'd suggest proftpd as it's configuration bears a lot of resemblance to apaches.

Probably pure-ftpd for gui as I've used it in windows on occasion and it's alright.

I would love a graphical interface but i could get by on CLI... but i don't like it...
just to clear things up, i am not running macos i have ubuntu 9.10...
is that list on wikipedia just clients or servers and is there a ftp server that i can set the root folder to my apache /var/www/ ?

Dunno where I got the mac thing :/ Getting crazy in my old age apparently. Sorry!

Any of the servers will support /var/www as the root folder.

That list is just servers.

A safer thing (and easier) to setup would be secure copy (scp)... and there are clients for that also (winscp for windows, scp commandline, etc) and if you're running ssh and such you've likely already got it enabled, just a matter of logging in with an account with access to that folder or that folder is set as their home and have appropriate permissions on it.

It doesn't send unencrypted passwords which is a nice bonus

Thanks,
I have installed GADMIN-PROFTPD 0.3.5 on there but its not cooperating yet... i have it setup with a user that has all privileges i think, and i can upload files to it via filezilla on my mac, it works... but when i upload via ftp in iweb, it says
Publish Error
There was an error communicating with the FTP server. Try again later, or check with your service provider.
i find that odd
i know it might be out of your area of expertise, and i could always get my files on this server by publishing to a folder and publsihing through filezilla, but with a larger site that is a time consuming pain
thanks