i'm writing to thank everyone for their help in the past on this
list. unfortunately after months of struggling with mysql on my
NetBSD/Alpha box, i'm not able to get a stable setup. 

mysql hasn't never been stable on the alpha for me. it would core dump
with errors what neither the netbsd group nor the mysql group could help
with.

by searching the mail-archive under netbsd for the mysql list, you'd find
most of my postings with unresolved questions. unfortunately at this time
gcc 2.95.x doesn't even compile on NetBSD 1.5.1. i'm using egcs. so
telling me to upgrade to gcc 2.95 won't help. switching OS won't do it for
me either. so no, linux isn't an option here.

from my headaches, i think the problems are due to:

- netbsd ld.so.elf
- buggy thread implementation (netbsd doesn't have native threads YET)
- egcs

as of today, i've switched to pgsql. it compiled out of the box, ran w/o a
hitch. i think part of the reason i've had success with pgsql is due to
the fact that it doesn't use threads. please no flames on threads
vs. nonthreads. i must admit it was really hard for me to switch from
mysql to pgsql. i've been working with it since a long time ago on other
platforms and OSes. i love the speed, however the instability on
netbsd/alpha i can't accept.

hopefully with native threads coming for NetBSD and further work on mysql,
i'll come back and give it another try. as of now, months of headaches is
just too much to handle.

p.s. make sure you design your applications to be DB-independent! i was
lucky here.