Mr.C. You're right!!!

I've been looking at the wrong things in vain (well not quite because I learned a great deal in the past week)! But all the things I explored were wrong. The problem is in fact with the vsftpd.conf file. I tried to read the documentation and tried to understand them but somehow it was beyond my scope of understanding. :-(

I finally found someone who posted a similar problem and I examined his vsftpd.conf file and compared with mine.

The element which unlocked the features I wanted was file_open_mode=0777 now I'm getting somewhere!

Here's the thread:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/6237

Thanks for all your help! Now if the creators of vsftp can figure out a way to make the documentation a little clearer! The problem is the shear quantity of configuration parameters and the defaults are strict!

Thanks again for all your help! :-)

Good progress.

Developers of daemons such as vsftpd require their audience to be well versed in the foundations of *nix concepts. Otherwise, each developer ends up re-writing a *nix 101 course. Instead, reference manuals are the key, and have always been the key, to mastering *nix systems. This is the nature of the beast.

Such documentation is best left to others as they encounter the need and feel the urge to help others. Ideally, each software site could have a collection of documents that aid in configuration and usage, but alas this requires a community or the developer to scour for accuracy.

The problem here was that I might have been in too much of a hurry. I agree about working on the foundation of the concepts, but as I said in an earlier post this is a complicated OS for a new user, especially for a person who likes books with pictures and has lived in a Mac or Windows for twenty years!

I started my career out as an illustrator, graphic designer and I've always been more the visual type, unfortunately for me Linux has always been more of a console system than a GUI system. Big blocks or masses of text are not my thing! I need snap-shots or at a minimum a page layout that has been "aired-out" a bit with space (\n) and a bit of variation in font size.

150 configuration options dumped into a page with no contrast or spacing is for machines and that, I am not! The man pages were converted to HTML from the man docs by an automated piece of software! From machine to us without love!

It's funny how I was driven by my curiosity to push towards resolution despite my complete frustration over the period of a week. I was both proud and relieve last night when I finally figured it out. I also felt a bit idiot for not looking in the right place when I had the answer literally staring me in the face!

I'm still happy I learned a great deal, which will certainly be useful later on.

http://vsftpd.beasts.org/vsftpd_conf.html
Line 356 of 551 was what I was looking for!