Sorry for the post.
I had previously uploaded the full release package files to my FTP Ubuntu 10.04 server but I believe I did a mistake as I uploaded it into the /root folder of my server.
I rebuilt the server new from scratch and downloaded the 1.7.0.2 release package again.
in this step form the Magento installation guide:
2. Upload the Magento web files to your web server via FTP