When I connect to my webserver running apache though FTP (or even locally on the server) When I try to create a new file or delete a file or overwrite a file in root/var/www it wont let me and this is troublesome because this is where the website is located and I need to be able to access and change these files.

Im hoping you guys have one of those sneaky command lines to help me out here hehe.

Well, for starters, I think some clarification of what you are trying to do would be helpful. Your description of how you are connecting to the server is not very clear. It sounds like you are trying to use ftp through your webserver, but that's not normally how you would access a site to update files.

What ftp app are you using?
Do you have normal login access to the server itself?
What about using something other than ftp (i.e. scp) instead?

"chmod" changes permissions. Your ftp client can do it, or from the command line read "man chmod"

Possibly what you really want is "chown". The standard gotcha is the web server is probably running as a limited priviledge user www-data, so if the server gets hacked, the damage is contained.

One way is to give the www-data user a (good) passsword and ftp using the www-data username. I recommend pass phrases rather than passwords. eg. "I hate battling ownerships and permissions" is a passphrase you can store in your head. Change that to a password by picking the first letters.... "ihboap" and maybe throwing in a number or two "1hb0ap".

Im just trying to use a FTP to change/edit my website files, its currently setup with Gproftpd with the webserver root as the user access root.

As cyent said: it sounds like a permissions issue. The account that you're using to log in for ftp needs to have permissions to access/modify files in the /var/www dir to make any changes. There's a couple ways you can do this that I've worked with:

Change the ownership of the directory to the user/group you're using for ftp access.

Leave the default ownership in place and append the www ftp groups to the user account you're using for ftp/www access.

Change the permissions of the dir to allow lax/open access (BAD IDEA!).

Personally I'd start with adding the groups to your username: it's more secure, doesn't remove access to the dir from other priveleged accounts and should allow you the editing capacity you're looking for. Under no circumstances, however, should you switch ownership/permissions to the base 'user' groups: it's extremely unsecure in comparison to the other two methods.

Gryyphyn, out.