Thanks for the replies. We now have a working MySQL connection to Zope. It was mainly due to not being logged in as the correct user when we ran the python 'install' for MySQL. Once we did that, it all worked fine. Whilst Zope is now talking to our little test MySQL db, we have another odd problem. Whenever we have to logout of the server and/or restart it (shouldn't be that often), our install of Linux MySQL (an rpm) stops working and disappears! We get an error that says it can't find the socket to connect to the local MySQL server. When we look (in /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock), the socket is no longer there! Our test db is still okay, but other files related to MySQL have vanished. If we re-install the rpm then all is fine again, until the next time the server is restarted then we lose it all again! Anyone got any ideas what's going on? We're using SuSE Linux 7.3 Professional and MySQL v3.23.47-1 (rpm). Richard H.