Hello!

Safe mode prevents normal operations with files, e.g.:
====================
<?
//if (copy("/home/tmp/test4.html", "/home/byg/f1/main/tpic/test4.html"))
/*if (!file_exists($fn)) echo "NOT FOUND $fn<br>\n";
if (file_exists($fn)) echo "FOUND $fn<br>\n";
if (copy($fn, "/home/byg/f1/main/tpic/test4.html"))
 echo "OK";
else
 echo "BAD";*/
//include "/home/byg/homepage/testy.inc";
?>
====================
it prints "FOUND phpVtC860" and "BAD".

More general case:
<?
if (!copy(somefile, anothefile)) echo "Error";
?>

this script will print "Error" if "somefile" has been
uploaded or just belongs to a uid different with uid of
running script. Quote log file:
=================
[14-Oct-2000 18:15:09] PHP Warning:  SAFE MODE Restriction in effect.  The script whose uid is 100 is not allowed to access /home/tmp/phpVtC860 owned by uid 9000 in /home/byg/homepage/testy.inc on line 5
=================

I think there is nothing wrong in my setup when
there are Apache-pseudo-user and web-development user with
different uids. Essentially, I cannot allow apache pseudo-user to own neither HTML files nor PHP-scripts.
But this is the cause of quoted message and failures of
copy function.

I think something wrong in algorithm of
PHPAPI int php_checkuid(const char *fn, char *fopen_mode, int mode), 'cos I didn't catch sense of the following
checking:
=============
        if (duid == (uid=php_getuid())) return(1);
        else {
              php_error(E_WARNING, "SAFE MODE Restriction in effect.  The script whose uid is %ld is not allowed to access %s owned by uid %ld",uid,fn,duid);
                return(0);
=============
when change this for return(1) all seems to be OK.
What sense in having the same uid owns php-scripts and
is web-user?

Loaded Modules
mod_php4, mod_setenvif, mod_auth, mod_access, mod_alias,
mod_userdir, mod_actions, mod_imap, mod_asis, mod_cgi, mod_dir,
mod_autoindex, mod_include, mod_status, mod_negotiation, mod_mime,
mod_log_config, mod_env, mod_charset, http_core

php.ini from distribution except the following lines:
safe_mode               =       On
safe_mode_protected_env_vars=LD_LIBRARY_PATH,REQUEST_URI,PHP_SELF
auto_prepend_file,error logging settings,upload_tmp_dir

WBR, Yury Bokhoncovich.