PHP/MySQL question

[Daniel B Bicknell]

Hi All,

I'm new to this list.  I'm a graduate student at Indiana University in
Library and Information Science and have recently become quite a Red Hat
Fedora convert.  

I have a Linux/PHP question I was hoping that someone could help me with.
I've been running Linux on a spare computer for about 9 months now; I am
fairly proficient with computers, but I'm not exactly and advanced user as
far a Linux is concerned.

Recently, I've decided to learn to use PHP and MySQL so that I can design
more powerful web pages.  I thought it would be great if my own server could
handle this so that I had somewhere to practice, but I am having problems
getting PHP (5.1.2), MySQL (5.0.18) and Apache (2.2) to all work together.
I am running Red Hat Fedora Core 5 and the OS comes with all 3 programs.
Apache is already set up to run PHP, however PHP has not been set up to
interact with MySQL.  After checking the PHP docs at www.php.net, I
discovered that PHP needs to be recompiled with the '-with-mysql' option;
additionally, the php.ini file needs to be altered to load php_mysql.dll.

My problem here is that, as all of these programs were loaded with the
installation of Fedora, I am not certain of where the install directory is
for PHP.  I do a 'find / -name php*' and I see several possible files (most
likely, the one in /bin) but nothing that really looks like an install
directory - no place where I can just ./configure make make-install.  Do I
need to download the entire PHP program and start the installation from
scratch?  Would this mean that I need to recompile Apache to be integrated
with the new make of PHP?  Also, I've searched my computer for php_mysql.dll
and cannot find it.  Does anyone know where this is available?

For what it is worth, all three programs work fine as they are:  Apache
serves up web pages, the PHP scripts run (as long as I don't make any errors
in the program), and I can use MySQL through the command line.  

If anyone out there has worked through this or a similar problem, I would
certainly appreciate any advice you could offer.

Thanks

Dan Bicknell