vsftpd chroot opps on ubuntu 12.04

Question

I'm unfamiliar with deb based systems, so my apologies if the solution is simple.

I'm trying to setup vsftpd to jail users to their home directories. I get the 500 OOPS: vsftpd: refusing to run with writable root inside chroot()

I research this problem, and find the common solution is to use the backport provided by thefrontiergroup like so:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thefrontiergroup/vsftpd

When I do this, I get a python error:

You are about to add the following PPA to your system:
 vsftpd 2.3.5 with the allow_writeable_chroot feature backported from vsftpd 3.
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~thefrontiergroup/+archive/vsftpd
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

Exception in thread Thread-1:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 551, in __bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py", line 99, in run
    self.add_ppa_signing_key(self.ppa_path)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py", line 132, in  add_ppa_signing_key
    tmp_keyring_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/tempfile.py", line 322, in mkdtemp
    name = names.next()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/tempfile.py", line 141, in next
    letters = [choose(c) for dummy in "123456"]
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/random.py", line 274, in choice
    return seq[int(self.random() * len(seq))]  # raises IndexError if seq is empty
ValueError: cannot convert float NaN to integer

Attempting to find another solution, I find a recommendation to change the permissions of the home directories as in this article vsftpd - restrict users to home directory However, following this would lead to a lot of manual permission resetting, because I want a subdirectory of each user to be accessible via apache like is described in the UserDir apache config http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/public_html.html

In the end, I want to be able to adduser foo and magically end up with the ability for foo to have full R/W privelages in /home/foo WITHOUT being able to see any other part of the filesystem, to have http://x.x.x.x/~foo/ accessible for anybody, and shell access if I change their shell from nologin to bash.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, vsftpd 2.3.5

Please offer any advice... I'm stuck scratching my head!