php special permissions

Hi, I am building a web interface to the vacation autoresponder program on linux. I let users login, edit their message and enable the autoresponder. The last step (enabling) is where the fun begins because php is run as apache on my box, and each users' .vacation.msg and .forward are not owned by apache. So you say, ok lets make apache run as group 'vacation' and also change the ownership on .vacation.msg and .forward. Well this makes sendmail cry out because it doesn't like having group-writable .forward files. How would you guys suggest i did this? I can post code if required. -- Mat Harris Network/Systems Administrator Genestate