not able to connect to MySQL

I have defined (just for testing) a user in my SQL named "pubuser" and granted it access to a database "publications." Of course I also created the database and two tables. I can access and manipulate the tables via phpMyAdmin and I can log in to sql using pubuser via the command-line interface. I have the following php code:

    <?php // login.php
    $db_hostname = 'localhost';
    $db_database = 'publications';
    $db_username = 'pubuser';
    $db_password = 'abc';
    ?>

also I have a test web page: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Connect to SQL</title> </head> <body> <?php Echo "Hello"; require_once 'login.php'; echo "got require"; $db_server = mysql_connect($db_hostname, $db_username, $db_password); if (!$db_server) die("Unable to connect to MySQL: " . mysql_error()); echo "Congrats, it seems you have connected to the server <br />

       host: $db_hostname<br />
       user: $db_username<br />
       password: $db_password <br  />
       for database: $db_database<br />";

print_r($db_server); ?> </body> </html> If I try to run this, it briefly says "connecting to localhost" and then indefinitely it says "waiting for localhost..." If I comment out the connect statement, the rest runs. What should I look for? Thanks MikeB