This is possibly related to Bug #17858.

    We've got Apache2 on Redhat 7.3, with safemode in php enabled.  We have safe_mode_gid set to on as well.  The safe_mode include directory is set as follows:
safe_mode_include_dir = "/home/staff/ryan/WWW"


I've then got the test script:

<?php
if ($dir = opendir("/home/staff/ryan/WWW"))
        {while (($file = readdir($dir)) !== false) {
            echo "$file\n";
          }
          closedir($dir);
        } else {
                echo "FAILED";
        }
?>

     That script has the following ownership permissions:
-rw-r--r--    1 web   nobody        229 Oct 24 15:31 test2.php

      And /home/staff/ryan/WWW is:
drwxr-xr-x    5 ryan     staff        4096 Oct 21 17:30 WWW

      Calling the script displays "FAILED" on the browser and causes the two following errors in the error log:
PHP Warning:  opendir() [<a href='http://www.php.net/function.opendir'>function.opendir</a>]: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect.  The script whose uid/gid is 89/99 is not allowed to access /home/staff/ryan/WWW/ owned by uid/gid 270/110 in /home/www/DOCS/phptest/test2.php on line 3
PHP Warning:  opendir(/home/staff/ryan/WWW/) [<a href='http://www.php.net/function.opendir'>function.opendir</a>]: failed to open dir: Inappropriate ioctl for device in /home/www/DOCS/phptest/test2.php on line 3


     Changing the ownership permissions to the same user and/or group causes the script to execute fine, displaying the contents with no problems or errors.

      It would appear that the safe_mode_include_dir value is not being used, but I'm also open to the suggesion that I've stuffed up somewhere else.

      For the record, I originally started having problems with 4.2.2 (user and group returned as -1) this was fixed upgrading to 4.3.0-pre1, but then the include_dir still had problems.  I've tested it with today's snapshot (php4-200210232100) and still have the same problem.

      My config options looks like :
./configure --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-openssl --with-xml --enable-track-vars --enable-force-cgi-redirect --enable-versioning --with-apxs2=/usr/local/httpd/bin/apxs --with-zlib --enable-ftp --enable-sockets --with-gettext --with-imap=/usr/local/imap --with-imap-ssl

      Ummm, help?

      Cheers, 
             Ryan.