suddenly sitewide permissions in apache dont work!!!!! URGENT

[whitecurve]

last week i found that ALL the websites on a 7.5.4 box would not display.
I was getting lots of permission errors in the logs.

Luckily I do local & remote backups and according to my last the permissions on any sites directories were like this:

[root@xxxxxx DOMAIN.com]# ll /home/download/BACKUPS/home/httpd/vhosts/DOMAINNAME.com

total 24
drwxr-x---   5 webmaster psaserv   42 Nov 30 13:05 anon_ftp
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      root    4096 Nov 30 13:05 bin
drwxr-x---   3 webmaster psaserv   84 May 16  2005 cgi-bin
drwxr-x---   2 root      psaserv   88 Feb 10 15:33 conf
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      psaserv  128 Nov 30 13:05 error_docs
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      root      45 Nov 30 13:05 etc
drwxr-x---  34 webmaster psaserv 4096 May  2 15:00 httpdocs
drwxr-x---   8 webmaster psaserv 4096 Jan 24  2005 httpsdocs
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      root    4096 Nov 30 13:05 lib
drwxr-x---   2 root      psaserv   38 Nov 30 13:07 pd
drwx------   2 webmaster root      23 Sep  8  2004 private
dr-xr-x---   7 root      psaserv   82 Nov 30 13:05 statistics
drwxr-xr-x  15 root      psaserv 4096 Nov 30 13:10 subdomains
drwxrwxrwt   2 root      root       6 Nov 30 13:05 tmp
drwxr-xr-x   5 root      root      42 Nov 30 13:05 usr
drwxr-xr-x   3 root      root      16 Nov 30 13:05 var
drwxr-xr-x   3 root      psaserv   19 Nov 30 13:07 web_users

But the machine just wasnt going to display the sites with these permissions, so in the end i had to change the them to:

chmod 755 /home/httpd/vhosts/DOMAINNAME.com/*

[root@xxxxxx DOMAINNAME.com]# ll /home/httpd/vhosts/DOMAINNAME.com/
total 24
drwxr-x---   5 webmaster psaserv   42 Nov 30 13:05 anon_ftp
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      root    4096 Apr  4 20:34 bin
drwxr-x---   3 webmaster psaserv   84 May 16  2005 cgi-bin
drwxr-x---   2 root      psaserv   88 May  2 15:05 conf
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      psaserv  128 Nov 30 13:05 error_docs
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      root      45 Apr  4 20:34 etc
drwxr-xr-x  38 webmaster psaserv 4096 Apr 29 16:03 httpdocs
drwxrwxrwx   9 webmaster psaserv 4096 Apr 29 15:51 httpsdocs
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      root    4096 Apr  4 20:34 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 root      psaserv   55 May  2 14:55 pd
drwx------   2 webmaster root      23 Sep  8  2004 private
dr-xr-x---   7 root      psaserv   82 Nov 30 13:05 statistics
drwxr-xr-x  16 root      psaserv 4096 Apr 29 01:53 subdomains
drwxrwxrwt   2 root      root       6 Apr  4 20:34 tmp
drwxr-xr-x   5 root      root      42 Apr  4 20:34 usr
drwxr-xr-x   3 root      root      16 Nov 30 13:05 var
drwxr-xr-x   3 root      psaserv   19 Apr  4 20:34 web_users

But i want to know what is causing the problems?
It seems to be machine wide

any ideas?