PHP server setup status

I've been trying to get the server running with the energy data visualization code I've been working on. it has not yet been a success, but here's my progress so far:

I could not get the installed version of php working with apache, though i added the necessary directives. There was no module binary for php in the apache/modules directory, but I found one elsewhere (in the php installation dir). However, that module threw some error about "garbled module" when I tried to restart the apache httpd server (using apachectl).

Next plan: install a fresh version of php which will be able to compile the module from source. Downloaded php 5, but it didn't like apache's apxs library. Then I downloaded php 4, removed the currently installed version of php 4 (using RPM) and tried to build the module. It complained that if I didn't specify a path to the mysql directory, other apache modules might not be able to access the mysql database. This might be a problem, but it's one for another day. I compiled the module, and was able to restart apache and get a php file to load properly - yeah!

However, the database code did not work; it just threw an error about not being able to connect to localhost as daemon@localhost with no password. When I explicitly included the link_identifier in the mysql_select_db function, I instead got this error:
"Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client"

I suspect that the final solution may include removing the RPM versions of apache and mysql and compiling everything from scratch. Or move the project off of cee-landscaper and onto sensor2.andrew and see if the default installation is wprking any better over there...