creating a directory in safemode

Hi all, I need to create a PHP script that will create some arbitrary directory and copy in some files. When I use the command mkdir('./foo',0777); I get the following error: Warning: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 534 is not allowed to access /home/virtual/site22/fst/var/www/html/foo owned by uid 48 in /home/virtual/site22/fst/var/www/html/web_page_interface.php on line 28 So then I tried being clever and created a bash script that could be executed from the within php with the command shell_exec('./script'); And I got the following error: Warning: Cannot execute using backquotes in safe mode in /home/virtual/site22/fst/var/www/html/web_page_interface.php on line 24 Both times my script died. Is there any way to do what I want to do and get around Safe Mode? Or is there are least a way to create the dir as mode 777? This isn't my server, so I can't edit the php.ini file to turn it off. Thanks, Dan Anderson