I'm sorry for addressing it here, but I can't find anywhere else to put it. I sysadmin a system with 1200 users, and I can't seem to find the appropriate security to apply with php. suexec is fine with this shared resoruce server, but with open_basedir, the most I can do is disallow viewing of files below the script's location. With safe_mode on, it goes overboard and disables a LOT of important functions that people use (e.g. shell_exec), and even when people create files, it's still chowned by apache and not the user. If mod_php could act a bit more like suexec and run as the user in mod_php.

This is on php 4.3.0 on Gentoo Linux.