>----r-x---    1 ajft     None  6316 Oct 31 11:59 venus.conf*

Yes, very odd permissions!  Did you do your installation as an
administrative user?  See if "chmod 666 venus.conf" will change
the permissions and allow you to read and write the file.

--Phil

-- 
Phil Nelson                       NetBSD: http://www.netbsd.org
e-mail: phil@cs.wwu.edu           Coda: http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu
http://cs.wwu.edu/faculty/nelson