Unable to connect to MySQL database using Database class

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
Just downloaded CI and ran through the intro. I am evaluating
a few frameworks, and I like what I see.

Problem is, I can’t connect to a MySQL database, so I must be missing
something, or just as likely, doing something rather stupid.

I have tried all three methods described in the manual - i.e., set
the values in database.php, use autoload; set values in database.php
explicitly load by passing TRUE as 3rd param to model class. And then
tried to load explicitly from both controller and model classes.

I’ve tried with dbdriver set to both mysql and odbc. The results of
all of these 8 attempts have been identical. Incidently, I get the
same result when I try to use the scaffold facility.

Anyway the result that is displayed in the browser is:

An error occurred while loading http://bigmax.ipc.com/CodeIgniter/index.php/trader:
Connection to host bigmax.ipc.com is broken.

This is on CI 1.6.1, RHEL8, MySQL 5.0.45, unixODBC 2.2.12 PHP 5.2.4, Apache 2.2.6

Both mysql (native MySQL interface) and isql (ODBC interface) connect
and allow me to work with the database, so the problem does not seem to
be with MySQL or ODBC.

If sample code will help, I will send it in.

Thanks much