// Damn. What a nightmare. // // Eric, I'm going to make some assumptions. Please forgive me if I'm off // base: // // 1. You're pretty new to Linux About 6 months old... // 2. You've had some prior experience with Microsoft's operating systems Too much prior experience! // None of your problems were caused by Linux, Python, MySQLdb or Zope, but // rather by your lack of familiarity with your OS. Hopefully, your three // weeks in hell have taught you that it's time to spend some time // getting to know Linux better. ;-) Yes, I just spent 3 weeks getting to know Linux and gcc better. I've learned a lot. // As a rule of thumb, you should never need to reformat your hard // drive(!), nor reinstall Linux or Python. I repeat ... never! Too often, // users of Win95/98/NT find themselves taking this kind of course, like // when their DLLs get FUBAR'd, but that's almost never necessary with // Linux. If you find yourself thinking you need to do this, stop. It's a // sign you need to get some more information about what's happening. I agree. I'm a "newbie", but not THAT new. I reformatted the hard drives because I decided to scrap the dual boot situation; Frankenstein is now a dedicated Linux box. Boy, I sure got flamed for saying that I reformatted! // Everything you'll ever need to know about Linux is available for free on // the Internet, but it can be hard to locate. So I strongly urge you to go // out and purchase a good reference book. Matt Welsh's _Running Linux_ // will do fine. Yes, finding the info is what always takes me the longest time. Here's a list of the books I've found to be good references: The Linux Network - Butzen and Hilton - This one is FANTASTIC! Linux Programmers Reference - Petersen GNU C++ for Linux - Swan and, although I hate to admit it, Linux for Dummies - Hall - This is a great general reference for Linux The Linux Programmer's Reference helped me the most on this particular problem. It had the best explanation of building and using libraries I could find. I was looking for a table of compiler switches with an explanation (a good explanation) of each switch. I never found one. This book had all the info, but it took a while to mine it all out. // Once you get your book, you want to do some reading about ldconfig, // ld.so.conf, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Actually, I did modify my ld.so.conf but going back to it I realize that, while I added "/usr/local/lib/mysql," I left out "/usr/local/lib". Now they are both in there. Hopefully this will help in the future. I couldn't find any info on LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks for the pointers! I still think the mailing lists are the best resource! Eric.