perfect-server-ubuntu-11.10-ispconfig-3 ftp questions

[The Lost]

Hello,
Thanks for reading my post. I have some general questions about this particular how-to and where it pertains to user permissions and ftp.

I use this box for numerous things and would like to have 1 super user capable of administering the system without restriction as primarily i have to administer this computer on my own. My questions come down to this current how-to's setup in regards to pureFTPd, i would like this 1 super user to be able to copy files to and from the system anywhere including the root. I would prefer the user not have to log in as root. It would seem that i found some information about pureftpd and that it must be run with the option -a gid where gid indicates the group ID # that i wish to exclude from the chroot. However since this is a mysql installation i dont know how i would do that. Furthermore it would seem that my default user that i created at installation has access outside of his home directory however not the permissions to read-write-execute and i tried adding this username to the root group to grant permissions but im still getting permission denied when i attempt to ftp in and create a folder on the system outside of his home directory.

Sadly, it would seem that the common default go-to comment when posting for help on any forum these days would be usually something like " go read this or go read that, or go search this or go search that " and usually ends up with something like.... " you are an idiot, you are making your system unsecured blah blah blah " what ever happened to sharing information when asked for the sake of trial and error.

For what its worth, i did search which is how i found the -a gid information and as well when i searched about mysql i also found i needed to create another setting file at /etc/pure-ftpd/conf named ChrootEveryone contents of which simply say no but i still havnt gotten the results i need.

To recap short and sweet heres what i've done so far:
1)Fresh install and followed the guide at http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-se...10-ispconfig-3 minus installing ispconfig-3 cause i needed to sort out this ftp issue first.
2) created file at /etc/pure-ftpd/conf with echo no > /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/ChrootEveryone
3) usermod -a -G root username to add the username to root group so i can create and modify items outside his home directory. (this doesnt seem to be working as intended)

now i know that number 2) needs to be used in conjunction with -a gid in order for full effect but i cant figure out where or how to use that option.

Thanks in advance everyone for reading the post and humoring my question.

[till]

The ispconfig installer is configuring all services incl. Ftp, so following this guide without installing ispconfig is quite useless as all services are not properly configured then.

Regarding your file transfer user, normally you use sftp oe scp for that and not ftp. Scp and ftp are file transfer protocols provided by the ssh damon and not pureftpd. A nice windos application is winscp, but most other ftp clients support scp and sftp as well.

[The Lost]

Thanks for not actually answering the original question, let me just be short / sweet and to the point.

How do i exclude a user from chroot with mysql version of pureftpd. I WILL be installing ispconfig just not until this user over ftp is sorted out... Thanks for the input about the ftp via ssh options although im not interested in them for this task.