So after a few hours sitting at the terminal of the server, I found that the problem wasn't with MySQL after all.

I never thought the server was to blame, but I thought I'd mussed the database security because none of the services that accessed the old server could access the new one.

This website, for example, uses MySQL to store these entries. When the old server is running (as it is now), the site works. When the new server is running, this site reports that the database is unavailable.

It took a while before I realized it wasn't the MySQL server, but the PHP engine. PHP had been linked to the old MySQL libraries, whose client couldn't access the new server, naturally. The old libraries had no reasonable expectation of understanding changes in the new server's protocols. In particular, it was complaining because the protocol security had changed. Thus my confusion.

Kicking myself, I set about rebuilding PHP using the new libraries. I was twice foiled.

First, I had thought, since I'm running on a 64-bit Sparc, why not use the optimized 64-bit version of the database? There's one available right from MySQL; download, uncompress, configure, run. Worked, too. Got the data restored from backup, reconfigured the security, everything seemed happy. Then the problems happened. When I found the PHP link problem, I set about the remake, but alas, the GCC compiler used to make PHP doesn't spit out 64-bit code (that'll probably be a future upgrade), so the linker couldn't link the PHP objects and the MySQL libraries.

Then I settled for the 32-bit Sparc version. Again, MySQL had it. Download, uncompress, configure, run. This was easier as I copied the data directory from the 64-bit directory; it should be the case, I reasoned, that the database structure would be the same and independent of the compilation of the server software--if not, I'll re-restore. The databases worked fine. Did some quick queries with some odd joins, and data appeared.

Tried the rebuild of PHP with the new MySQL 32-bit version. Compilation was successful, and all looked good.

Alas, the second PHP problem occurred. The installer failed on some XML library. I shook my head. I downloaded the latest PHP, thinking maybe something else I'd added to make something more up-to-date broke the install. Alas, I was on version 5.0.3, and they've since released 5.0.4, which had no mention of the libraries. I tried anyway, and have the same results.

I'm getting miffed. I'm reviewing the installer failure, which it seems a few people have run into; I've found similar questions with Google queries, but I haven't found any explanations or solutions I can use.

Until then, MySQL v3 is still running the show.