chmod 777 on local server not working

i have a ubuntu 10.10 box on my local network and sshing with my mac what i did is chmod 777 the www directory recursively so that i can use my fav ide to develop on it.

i did this

sudo chmod 777 /path/to/file -R

in terminal it didnt return anything so im guessing it worked.

i'm using coda on the mac and btw i have ftp turned on , on the ubuntu server so i remotly connected to it using a local ip when i try to create a folder in the www folder it keeps saying

Could not create folder named “untitled folder”.
Server said: Permission denied.
Error -140: remote mkdir failed

same goes for trying to create anything.

how do i bypass this to make it work?

thanks

Using 777 on an server with an ftp is not safe, so unless it's a very isolated network I'd suggest using 700 and changing the user (chown) or 770 and changing the group (chgrp) to manage the permisions if you are developing with some other users.

So if the ftp user you are using is for example myftpuser

sudo chown -R myftpuser /path/to/file
sudo chmod -R 700 /path/to/file

Should work.

The wikipedia article on file system permissions may be relevant too