step 1 — compiling mysql 5.0.41 on debian linux

mysql help about install from source

wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.0/mysql-5.0.41.tar.gz/from/http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/mysql/

tar -xvvf mysql-5.0.41.tar.gz

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --with-collation=latin1_general_ci

packages that may be need: libncurses5-dev

make -j4

make install

useful options:
--localstatedir=/usr/local/mysql/data
--enable-thread-safe-client
--with-low-memory
--prefix=/usr/local/mysql
--with-charset=latin1
--with-collation=latin1_general_ci
--with-unix-socket-path=/usr/local/mysql/tmp/mysql.sock
--with-client-ldflags=-all-static
--with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static
--with-openssl
--with-mysql-user=mysql
--enable-assembler
--with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static # not for user-defined functions
--with-unix-socket-path=/tmp/mysql.sock
Where to put the unix-domain socket. SOCKET must be
an absolute file name.

after all done, check your /etc/mysql/my.cnf (server specific options) and /etc/my.cnf (global options) for same socket path. i found that in global conf, socket placed in /tmp/mysql.sock, but server specific - /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock. that make error when you trying to run mysql tool. if you do not want to change - workaround is to use "-S socket_path" .