I do this all the time, yet I'm always scampering around looking for my quick instructions, so here is the quick version for posterity.

Download the source for MySQL from here:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html

The .tar.zip that comes down will create it's own directory, so go where you want your install directory (typically /usr/local/installs) and tar -xzvf mysql-VERSION

CD into the newly created directory, then:
    shell> groupadd mysql
    shell> useradd -g mysql mysql
    shell> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql
    shell> make
    shell> make install
    shell> cp support-files/my-medium.cnf /etc/my.cnf
    shell> cd /usr/local/mysql
    shell> bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
    shell> chown -R root  .
    shell> chown -R mysql var
    shell> chgrp -R mysql .
    shell> bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &    <<< Dont forget the ampersand

A default install has no password attached to the root user, so you'll want to:

    shell> bin/mysqladmin -u root password NEWPASSWORD

An excellent second step, assuming this is a LAMP rig, is to go get the

php

 MyAdmin source here:
http://www.

php

 myadmin

.net

 /home_page/downloads.

php

 

unpack it into a directory, point

Apache

  at it with something as simple as:

<VirtualHost 192.168.1.42:80>
	ServerName	42.
php
 MyAdmin
	DocumentRoot	/www/sites/
php
 MyAdmin
</VirtualHost>
[/pre]

you'll also need to put a configuration file into the root directory of 
php
 MyAdmin, that looks like this (config.inc.
php
 :

<?
php
 

$i=0;
$i++;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']          = 'username';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']      = 'password';
?>


Restart 
Apache
  and you should be good to go (assumes you have 
PHP
  running already as well...)