Post installation

I'm having a strange issue trying to implement a multi-site configuration.
It is on our co-located Plesk server, which I administer myself as root.

What I'm trying to do is share just the core directories, such as:
/includes/
/modules/
etc...

...via symbolic links to a single copy on my server

Then, i'll be able to have a unique document root for each site where I can place site-specific files, as well as the site-specific theme, modules, etc.

I searched all over for answers to these questions, to no avail.

I'm new to Drupal, installed it fine, and began converting my website (www.mymacfix.com) over to Drupal (http://74.52.183.66/~osiris/mymacfix/). It's been going pretty smoothly, but I have a couple issues that I can't seem to resolve.

I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out why anonymous users are receiving an access denied message when trying to access book nodes.
The site is www.robonline.id.au
The books are in the left nav as Education and Training @ Students. I set the student's book up just to test it is for all books and nit just the Ed @ Training book. the Web development link is a blog style page picking up a taxonomy term and it works fine.

Could you refresh my brain ...
I realised 2 sites with Drupal 5.x
On the first one, for each node, the admin user can show a "track tab" after the "outline tab"
On the second one, I don't have the "track tab"
I forgot the procedure to show the tab.

I am using the Webform module in Drupal 5.1 and am trying to limit the number of characters users can enter in a text area box. I tried adjusting the width and height settings but that didn't do much. What I want to do is set a limit of say 1000 characters to prevent people from typing endlessly and filling up the database. Any ideas??? thanks!

Drupalers,

I need help! I have a Drupal site with a "member" role, which has access to view certain CCK content types. Today, with no permission changes on my part, Drupal decided to deny access to one of the CCK types.

Here's what I find crazy. The users have the ability to create and edit the nodes, but don't have permission to view them. Any ideas?

There's a $50 PayPal reward here if this can be fixed today!

Thanks,

Chuck