installing mysql...

Before I install Apache and PHP, I'm trying to install mysql. I'm running Solaris 8...and it doesn't appear to be working correctly. When I did the install from the free sun site, it didn't seem to be installing everything that it should (a var directory?) and I couldn't get it started. So I downloaded it from www.mysql.com and got a message when it was trying to do some of the mysql_bench files that there were unknown file types. (If I remember correctly the same thing happened when I did it with the pkgadd of the version from the free sun site). Then it wouldn't let me start it with ./bin/safe_mysqld --user=mysql & but I could start it without naming a user (./bin/safe_mysqld) and create new dbs and stuff. So is that running as root then? It also won't let me change the password (or I'm doing it wrong---using ./mysqladmin -u root -p password 'new-password'; then it prompts me for a password?! What should I do there? What is the password? It won't let me do the sql-bench/run-all-tests. It says the file is not found...but it is there and is an executable. I don't have a clue what to do, or what is going wrong...any help would be appreciated. Tara