Probably the best way to see PHP settings and what's installed is to look at the PHP info page. To do that, save the following in a file titled phpinfo.php and FTP it to your server, and then call it from your browser:
Code:
Content visible to registered users only.
There is also an option to see PHP info via the ACP. Safe mode can be set to off via PHP_INI_SYSTEM, which means either in the php.ini or httpd.conf file. If you do not have access to those files, your host would need to make the change for you.