On my SME 7 system I found that the root of my ibay was read-only, but any of the subdirectories were read/write (html, files, cgi-bin).
Before I could write in the root of the ibay I had to:
# cd /home/e-smith/files/ibays/<ibay>
# chown user:group .
# chmod 550 .
I could now "write" in the root of the ibay, but since the /etc/e-smith/events/actions/ibay-modify script says:
#------------------------------------------------------------
# Fix permissions on ibay files.
#------------------------------------------------------------
#--------------------------------------------------
# main directory is writeable only by root
#--------------------------------------------------
chdir "/home/e-smith/files/ibays/$ibayName"
or die "Could not chdir to /home/e-smith/files/ibays/$ibayName";
mkdir '.AppleDesktop' unless (-d '.AppleDesktop');
esmith::util::chownFile("root", "root", ".");
chmod 0755, ".";
I suspect that the root will get locked again when you reboot...