MySQL & PHP issues since upgrade

Question

Little bit of background: I ran an arch server about two years ago, basically a personal web server (for about a year).  Had apache, mysql and php running nicely on it using the basic configurations with some minor changes.
Now, present day.  I have recently installed Arch again and once the upgrades were announced, I held off on installing the LAMP applications.  So, Friday I installed them (as oppsed to upgrading), and thought I had them all working fine.  Apache was running, mysql was running (command line access was working well with one exception, more on that later), and php was being parsed.  When I tried to pull data out of a database, i was getting "call to undeclared function mysql_pconnect()."  I googled the error and searched the Arch forums, and everything said to make sure php was compiled with the '--with-mysql' option.  I checked that using phpinfo(), and indeed it was, but it was '--with-mysql=/shared', /usr' (or something similar).  What I ended up doing was removing the arch package and recompiling php myself using '--with-mysql' (no arguments) and it works beautifully.  So, basically, is the arch configuration for php correct?
Also, issue number two, I have created a non-root user in mysql, but when i try to log in i receive access denied for 'user@localhost' (using password: YES).  Did i miss a setting that won't allow me to log in as anyone but root?
Thanks in advance. 

Answer 1

simple, edit your php.ini like so:
BEFORE:
1250:;extension=mysql.so
AFTER
1250:extension=mysql.so
no need to recompile php.
ps: "grep -n mysql.so /etc/php.ini"