Newbie could really use some help

Trying to install a site search script

[elevate]

Since I'm new to maintaining my own site and PHP, I could really use anyone's help in figuring this out.

I'm trying to install a script that will index my site and power a search function for my readers. One of the variables in the configuration script is $file_root, which I've entered as "/var/www/html"

But whenever I try to run the script to index my site, I get the following error message:

Warning: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 555 is not allowed to access /var/www/html owned by uid 0 in /home/virtual/site51/fst/var/www/html/search/search.php on line 530
/var/www/html is not a directory. Solution: Check $file_root variable.

What am I doing wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[seomike2003]

use $DOCUMENT_ROOT
as the path instead see if that works

[jatar_k]

or possibly

$file_root = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];