I remember reading about a problem in the uppercase and lowercase differences between the redhat rpms and the mysql rpms. I had some trouble myself using the rpms and went through uninstalling all the mysql related rpms ( rpm -qa | grep -i ‘mysql’ ). This included a php-mysql rpm. I had to grab php source and compile that myself since I was removing the redhat rpms. I put the mysql rpm’s back on after that, and things were running ok then. I think thats about most of the process I went through.
http://www.pmachine.com/forum/threads.php?id=5725_0_15_0_C