MySQL connect used to work PLUS errors not displaying

I swear, it was just working last week! Well, a while ago, on another machine. You get the idea. Here's the deal... PHP 5.1.6 and MySQL 5.x on FC6 fully patched. 1. A simple page with a call to phpinfo() works fine. 2. A barely more complicated page also works fine, in that it throws an expected error: <?php error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set('display_errors','On'); dsjdlfjsldfjs; phpinfo(); ?> returns Notice: Use of undefined constant dsjdlfjsldfjs - assumed 'dsjdlfjsldfjs' in index.php on line 22. (thanks to another message that suggested adding the calls directly into the page when error reporting in php.ini seems to be ignored). Then the phpinfo data displays. 3. BUT, a call to a MySQL database: <?php error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set('display_errors','On'); @ $db=new mysqli('localhost','whil','secret','test'); if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {echo 'Error ­ could not connect to database.'; exit; } ?> results in a blank page. No errors, no warnings, no nothing. I have confirmed through the Query Browser that the credentials passed are good and result in access to the test database on localhost. So two things seem broken: a) The connect doesn't work. I have done this oodles of times before, although not on this particular machine. I'm thinking there's a config issue with mysqli but I dunno what. The config from phpinfo is below. b) Why does the error reporting NOT work as soon as I jam a $db new mysql call into the code? Thanks, Whil phpinfo() reports this configure script: './configure' '--build=i686-redhat-linux-gnu' '--host=i686-redhat-linux-gnu' '--target=i386-redhat-linux-gnu' '--program-prefix=' '--prefix=/usr' '--exec-prefix=/usr' '--bindir=/usr/bin' '--sbindir=/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/etc' '--datadir=/usr/share' '--includedir=/usr/include' '--libdir=/usr/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/libexec' '--localstatedir=/var' '--sharedstatedir=/usr/com' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--cache-file=../config.cache' '--with-libdir=lib' '--with-config-file-path=/etc' '--with-config-file-scan-dir=/etc/php.d' '--disable-debug' '--with-pic' '--disable-rpath' '--without-pear' '--with-bz2' '--with-curl' '--with-exec-dir=/usr/bin' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr' '--with-png-dir=/usr' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--without-gdbm' '--with-gettext' '--with-gmp' '--with-iconv' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr' '--with-openssl' '--with-png' '--with-pspell' '--with-expat-dir=/usr' '--with-pcre-regex=/usr' '--with-zlib' '--with-layout=GNU' '--enable-exif' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-magic-quotes' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-sysvsem' '--enable-sysvshm' '--enable-sysvmsg' '--enable-track-vars' '--enable-trans-sid' '--enable-yp' '--enable-wddx' '--with-kerberos' '--enable-ucd-snmp-hack' '--with-unixODBC=shared,/usr' '--enable-memory-limit' '--enable-shmop' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-dbx' '--enable-dio' '--with-mime-magic=/usr/share/file/magic' '--without-sqlite' '--with-libxml-dir=/usr' '--with-xml' '--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs' '--without-mysql' '--without-gd' '--without-odbc' '--disable-dom' '--disable-dba' '--without-unixODBC' '--disable-pdo' '--disable-xmlreader' '--disable-xmlwriter' // end