File Upload problem

My site allows certain types of document uploads, which usually work fine until the document size gets large. It seems to vary by type but generally if they get around 1.5 or 2 Meg, it fails and spews the actual binary file contents on the screen. Of course I've checked the php.ini to see what the upload_max_filesize is and it's set at 256 Meg (not that I'd ever allow them to upload one that big). So does anyone have any idea what other things I need to check? I don't see any errors in the log files pertaining to this. Let me clarify that I'm inserting these documents into a blob field on a database and not in a folder -- if that matters.

Ok, I'm having to post my followup question here because your site keeps asking me to "post your text in the comment section" even though I've done that. So I got root access. But it doesn't do me much good if I can't add the max_allowed_packet change, or any other change, to the my.cnf file. I can't "sudo" because I'm not in the "sudoers" file and I can't chmod because I don't have permissions to do that either. Catch-22. So what do I do? Can someone just change my max_allowed_packet to 32M ? Thanks