[oldengine]

Does your host have phpsuexec compiled into Apache? This runs php as cgi, but more importantly, your php scripts are set chmod user:user meaning that they run under your user name instead of the nobody user name. If you run all scripts under YOUR user name, then data files are also written under YOUR user name. They are then set chome 644 and your directories are set chmod 755. Under these conditions, safe mode is happy.