I installed RedHat 9 and did a LAMP/Qmail install for a buddy in W. Va. I also installed Vsftpd and added myself as a user so I could send him some things (from Michigan). I am no Linux whiz and he knows, well, nothing. He bought a domain name and someone else built him a couple of web pages (with no page "index" of any type - argh.....) so I logged in and tried to help him get the whole mess sorted out. Problem is this: after I renamed what should have been his index page to "index.htm" and uploaded it back to him I recieved a "permission denied" message when I tried to view it online. I gave him a short explanation of the chmod command, over the phone, and we got it working. I used to pay for webhosting (gee, that was stupid) and I uploaded things to my webhost via FTP - file permissions did not get changed. Maybe I could have changed his with my ftp client (I forgot to try that). Anyway - is this a umask setting or what? How would you configure Vsftpd so that it does not change file permissons when things are uploaded? Thanks for any help - it's greatly appreciated.

In the vsftpd.conf file, there is a line that says something along the lines of:
local_umask=022

I would start there and also look at the FAQ