I've gone around in circles all day with this and can't make any progress. Users aren't able to use PHP file functions in their own webspace becuase of permissions.
Their html dir must be set to group "apache" in order to file functions to work.
Look at this short example.
http://vf.forumexperts.com/test.php
the script UID is correct, but POSIX_UID id still "apache". Which seems to be what file permissions are being checked against. Is this standard operating procedure, or is something broken? It seems logical that if the script UID matches the /var/www/html UID then file functions should work!
Here is the the pertinent phpinfo()
http://vf.forumexperts.com/info.php
Safe mode on/off doesn't have any effect on this.