Well, I want to install mysql because most of my site are database driven.. so I installed with 'apt-get install mysql-server' and it installs and I go through the setup screens with debconf and after it finishes it tries to start up the mysql server with 'mysqld' and it fails to start. Any ideas?

I did "apt-get install mysql-server" and answered the questions - it booted right up.

Is this the hostname issue again?

hehe hmm... i removed it and going to take another shot at it..

...

yep that worked.. im not sure what the problem was.

EDIT:
well after trying to setup root password, it gives me the following error:

PLEASE REMEMBER TO SET A PASSWORD FOR THE MySQL root USER !
This is done with:
/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root -p password 'new-password'
/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root -h li-24 -p password 'new-password'
See the manual for more instructions.

The first command worked just fine, but after I tried to do the second command I get this error:

mysqladmin: connect to server at 'li-24' failed
error: 'Can't connect to MySQL server on 'li-24' (111)'
Check that mysqld is running on li-24 and that the port is 3306.
You can check this by doing 'telnet li-24 3306'

This may be a hostname issue.

Execute this command:

EDIT (append, not overwrite)

echo "search members.linode.com" >> /etc/resolv.conf

That should fix it.

I should probably add that to all the distros... DHCP clients are supposed to pick this info up, but it doesn't seem to work in all setups..

-Chris

Well after I can login into mysql and run some commands and view the databases/tables, I was sure it was working.. now that I have sendmail installed I want to install a webmail program so that I can check my mail. I decided to go ahead with horde. I ran 'apt-get install horde' and it downloads and installs.. after it installs it tries to conenct to the mysql database and gives me the following error:

Error when trying to connect to the mysql database.
This error can occur if you have no database to connect to, or
if the password was incorrect.
use: dpkg-reconfigure -plow packagename to reconfigure.
Error when trying to connect to the mysql database.
This error can occur if you have no database to connect to, or
if the password was incorrect.
use: dpkg-reconfigure -plow packagename to reconfigure.

I tried running the command they gave me and just exits out with an error.

if there is a better webmail program out there let me know.. i know there is openwebmail .. should i use that one?

horde stuff is kind of hard to install (from source, anyhow).. lots of perl deps..

SquirrelMail gets good reviews.. and it's PHP based.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/squirrelmail/