hot to set default file permission / owner / group

[eluser]vile[/eluser]
this is the error message

SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 48 is not allowed to access /home/chat/codeigniter/chat/agents/rex/client_xml/ owned by uid 99

uid 48 is apache
uid 99 is nobody

I set php.ini safe mode = off. it didnt work
i also tried to disable safe mode in htaccess. still no luck.

is it normal to run apache under nobody and user id set to #-1? if not, who should run apache and under what group?