mclaud: You may be able to use your FTP password in a PHP script to login and do ftp_chmod, or send a raw FTP command to do the chmod, and thereby bypass safe_mode... Or you could write a suid shell script to let you do chmod. But you ain't gonna get PHP's chmod function and safe_mode to "work" on a file if the error message says you can't do that.
mclaud: zircu was merely correcting your spelling... * means "correction of above"