Hi, setting the appliance up results in a config that can not use magento connect as there are not the right permissions to allow saving information locally.  Searching the web I have found resolutions that require chmods using 777 on install directory.

So I did this on var/www/magento

However this solves the problem but result in magento reporting that config files are now open.

Is there a better way to enable the permissions for magento connect to work using the local file system?