Bill - I have to disagree.
There is no place I can find that YaBB tells you to change any files to '777' in sections that say (roughly) - this folder/files - here are the permissions.
That bottom part is totally generic text (copied in) and does not mention YaBB AT ALL - One of the problems with the Codex is that 'someone' included content without attribution or reference (or dates)
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"2.1.1.1 Apache on Unix/Linux (CHMOD)
* Basics
There are different flavors of Unix/Linux - all of them share a similar, somewhat common approach. In referring to this architecture, the word "Lunix" is used for both Unix and Linux derivates. "Read" permissions apply to files that are not actively run, but only being served, e.g text or plain html files. "Write" permissions are needed to dynamically create files, modify or delete them. "Execute" permissions are needed to run executable files, for example,
script files like PHP. To serve web pages that are php-powered properly, the most basic permissions that are needed, therefore, are "read" and "execute" (abbreviated as r-x).
Possible permissions settings are:
o r-- ... read only
o r-x ... read and execute
o rwx ... read, write and execute
Needless to say, other combinations are technically possible (such as -wx, --x or -w-), but they make little sense in webserver setups and will be ignored in this tutorial."
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I will fix that with a note - but I also cannot see how anyone could read that and then infer to arbitrarily decide to make something '777' in YaBB
So I conclude you are reading things that just aren't there.
And I stand by my statement - you should not have to make files '777' on Linux/Unix for YaBB to work. I never have had to and I have worked on dozens of YaBB Linux/Unix installs. Of course, "I know what I am doing".
Edited: I have fixed the Codex