Hi Guys,

Firstly a "hello" to everyone as this is my first post in here, and as my following newbie question will prove, I'm new to Linux - so go easy!

I'm a web (PHP) developer and recently got the opportunity to have a server hosted for me for free... so I bought one... a Dell PowerEdge 2950, with the idea it will provide the perfect opportunity for me to learn with. I've installed Fedora 6 on it (I know, not the most stable OS), put it in Global Switch in London and generally got it "running" - in that my AMP setup all works.

I've done a bit of reading, and am a Mac user (not a very good or willing one I will add) so I know enough of the Linux commands, and can navigate happily enough. But when it comes to fundamental understanding I am several pieces short of a jigsaw.

My issues are many, but the initial, fundamental query concerns users and groups. I have a friend who will help me on development projects so ultimately moving my project folders under svn control is the aim. However, until I am more confident with the basics I just want a simple setup.

So, currently I have all the user accounts / groups that fedora and necessary packages create plus two user accounts (user1 and user2 say). What I want is for user1 and user2 to both be able to access folders containing the files (FTP) and modify them, but also for the system to be able to write files itself. My method thus far was to put user1 and user2 in the group wheel, change the ownership of the files to root:wheel and set permissions to 664 for all files. Likely not a good method, but as a temporary method ftp works.

However, system generated files come from apache:apache and thus cannot access for writing. Adding apache to wheel and altering primary group seems very insecure and wrong. So my question is what is the ideal setup for this sort of system and how do I go about carrying it out?

Thanks in advance,

Paul