We are using Pure FTP on a Linux Red Hat 8 machine with Apache 2.0. I use DMX for web development and we are now trying to use Macromedia's Contribute for our content managers. However, we are having serious issues with this umask thing. I am NOT a network engineer but I have a general idea of config files, etc.

Initially, I had Contribute working for my users however, it was logging them in using my userID and password. Our network engineer says this is unacceptable even though Contribute only allows them access to certain folders. So I went into Linux and set up groups and users for all my Contribute people. Then I did a chgrp and chown recursively for the folders they were to have access to when using Contribute. Then I deleted all the connection key files so the users could no longer log in using my ID and PW.

Now however, I am unable to create new connection keys using their own IDs and passwords because Contribute cannot write and read its temp file. A tech note on Macromedia says the umask in the user's login profile and FTP config file needs to be configured. It says for two users to be able to share the same folder, the umask needs to be changed to 002 so users within the same group can overwrite files and directories. This is important because Contribute-specific folders (such as _notes) will be modified frequently. It also says (using an example for WU-FTP) that the ftpaccess file needs a line aded that reads: defumask 022 all.
I assume in our situation the line should read 'defumask 002 all' for Pure FTP if it works the same way.

At this point, Dreamweaver/Contribute cannot access the _notes or _mm folders because of the wrong permissions. I can still get and modify files and put them back so the problem seems to be that DW/Contribute has lost it's way when it comes to accessing its folders.

We have spent hours on this problem and my network engineer has given up saying he doesn't know how to fix it. He is task saturated with other fires to put out and I have been dropped to the bottom of his priority list.

Can anyone tell me what I need to do to get this problem fixed so my Contribute users can get back to work? Is there any work-around that I can do through DMX? Would recreating a new site definition work until we can get the umask thing figured out?

I may look like I'm doing nothing but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy.