[plug] MySQL help please

[Jim Householder]

I am trying to install a binary package and am not getting very far.
The version is 4.0.18-1.1.100mdk from MDK 10 community.  
The RPMs appeared to install correctly, other than the usual 'bad signature's.
The directory structure used is not the same as that used in the MySQL documentation.
The documentation uses / as the top of the tree while what I got uses /usr.
When I execute mysqld_safe to initialise things I get: 

   Fatal error: can't open privilege tables: Can't find file: ./mysql/host.frm

no matter where I start from.  It exists in /var/lib/mysql/mysql.
echos in mysqld_safe show it using /var/lib/mysql for the data directory, but / for the base directory.
Have I dug my hole too deep and have to start over from scratch???

TIA
Jim