[ale] PHP, MySQL, WordPress

[Jason Day]

I'm trying to get WordPress working on a Debian/Sarge box.  I installed
MySQL and PHP4, then followed the instructions for installing wordpress.
That worked.  I putzed around in the WordPress admin pages for a bit,
and added two users.  Then I clicked the "View Site" link , and firefox
popped up a dialog box that said something to the effect that I was
trying to download index.php, which is a ~ file, and what do I want to
do with it.  So I appended index.php to the URL in the address bar, and
got this message:

  Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL which is
  required for WordPress.

This was confusing, as less than 5 minutes before WordPress had
successfully created its database tables and added two users.  Now I
can't even get back to the admin page, it gives the same error.

I've never done any PHP programming, and I have no idea where to look
for this.  Why would the mysql extension just stop working all of a
sudden?  Can anybody shed some light on this?

Thanks,
Jason
-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9