See, that's what happens when you get a phone call in the middle of trying to help someone. At least we got the ball going in the right direction. You might load webmin onto the machine, it is a web interface and can make much of the MySQL control easier. It has a host of modules that may come in handy as you configure your machine. http://www.webmin.com your Centos load should support it. Are you adding Apache, PHP etc..? If so the link I gave you will help with the installations. john