Unix permissions for Craft
I'm not sure if this helps, but here is how I (attempt) to manage deployments/installs.

I first create a user so I'm not using the root account. I tie that user to the apache user group. We'll call him 'user1'.

I use beanstalk to deploy, and the deployment credentials are for 'user1'.

Once all of the files have deployed for the first time, I'll log into the server via terminal, and chown the project directory: chown -R user1:apache

Next, I'll make sure everything has the correct permissions: chmod -R 754 mysite.com

Next, I know that Craft needs to be able to write to:


/craft/app
/craft/config
/craft/storage


I will chmod those directories to 774. chmod -R 774. Since 'user1' belongs to apache, it can read/write to the appropriate directories.

Hope this helps!