holala

Was trying to help a client with similar issue and I notice that this error message is rather miss leading as the issue has nothing to do with php safe mode.

When you upload a file, the main image file actually got uploaded fine under

“wp-content/gallery/gallery/”

and it appears that the next-gen script is also trying to generate a thumbnail file under

“wp-content/gallery/gallery/thumbs”

And the permission on this /thumbs directory is being set with 755 permission.

The upload function should report “permission error on /thumbs directory” rather than “Check safe mode settings)”

You can simply change the permission set on “wp-content/gallery/gallery/thumbs” to “777” and retry again and it should work. (At least in my case)

On a note with 777 permission set on a directory e.g /images or /gallery, I have seen a lot of compromise where there are some bad codes within the upload script that the hacker manage to exploit and try to upload their compromised scripts and from here manage to own the user web space and manipulate any files/directory that have 777 permission or owned by the apache user.

As a quick effective work around, you can disable the execution of php and perl/cgi with a .htaccess file under any directory that should only images or doc with 777 permission.

Create a .htaccess file with the following content:

php_value engine off
OPTIONS -Indexes -ExecCGI

Hope this will help other wp users with similar issue.

Cheers.