Installing Drupal

I have hapily been using Drupal to host a small site that I use to let people track my PhD-project in product design. It is hosted on my university's server, but recently (as from 23. January), the server has blocked the use of include() and require() in php scripts due to an experienced security hole in some personal home pages.

I am getting the dreaded error when accessing http://localhost/drupal:
Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) in /Library/WebServer/Documents/drupal/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 31
Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)

Here's the info:

I'm installing on OS X 10.4, drupal 4.6.5, mysql 5 (I've also tried with mysql 4.1, same problem).

The weird thing is, I had drupal running just fine off of my local machine (all I want to do) a month ago, and it mysteriously stopped working and all I can get is that error. My settings.php file is setup correctly, I'm sure. I am able to access the drupal database in mysql with the drupal user using MySQL Query Browser, so I know the mysql server is running fine (mysqld running). Strangely enough, I get the same error whether the mysql server is running or not.

I've read every forum topic on this tonight, and no solutions seemed to help. I got excited when I discovered there is no directory /var/mysql/ on my machine--my mysql.sock appears to be located in /tmp -- I tried creating a symbolic link as someone else had suggested to no avail. I feel like this might be where the problem lies though. Is there any way I can tell drupal to not look in /var/mysql and to look in /tmp for mysql.sock aside from the symbolic link?

This is odd.
I decided to try out the XAMMP thing, and was most impressed ... until I tried to turn on clean_urls.
I did the usual (I've installed Drupal on about 6 different platforms now) but still something is wrong.
Today it's Drupal 4.6.5, WinXP, Apache2, PHP4.4.1

httpd.conf:

    LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
...
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
    AllowOverride All

OK.

I initially started in a subdir, but have given up on that while trying to fix this, and reverted to a default top-level install.

settings.php $base_url = 'http://localhost';
As Normal

.htaccess:

...
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

As Normal

I know .htaccess and rewrite is working. I can see the front page, and login just fine.
If I visit http://localhost/?q=admin/settings all is well.
If I visit it AGAIN (either using a nav link, refreshing, or submitting the page) I get.

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare conf_init() (previously declared in F:\hosts\xampp\htdocs\drupal\includes\bootstrap.inc:45) in F:\hosts\xampp\htdocs\drupal\includes\bootstrap.inc on line 44

Odd.
So I do a bunch of temporary debugging, sure enough, a check for function_exists('conf_init') embedded in the top of bootstrap.inc returns true. Yet I can't detect when this could have happened.
About now I'm suspecting some odd optimization by the Zend PHP Engine, caching functions it saw on the last page.

When I try to administer a new module I get this error:

user warning: Access denied for user: 'ttuser@%' to database 'ttuser' query: LOCK TABLES cache WRITE in /home/content/t/c/a/tcatrainer/html/d/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 108.

my username and database name are both ttuser

I have alot of these"Access denied for user:" errors in my administer section

How do I allow access for my username? I often get these eroor but I am able to add content to the drupal site.

I searched and searched, but not found an answer to my question, so here goes:

I've got a basic site up and running (http://amnesty.ed.ac.uk), but have been unable to get the default upload feature working properly. My settings are set so the file system path is "files", and my temp directory is "/tmp". Files a directory in my public_html folder, where drupal is also installed. Files has been chmoded 777.

Initially when I attempted to upload files I got the error:

Well, I need some help. I'm new to Drupal.

Problem: When I navigate to my site, I get a Chameleon flavored Drupal Welcome screen - but when I click on any links - I just get an index list of files for my site. For example, I click on the link "create the first account" but the page just shows the index of the files/folders of my root web site.