Has anyone ever made any sense of mysql-server-3.23.58?

I am about to reinstall it for the fourth time. The whole setting passwords
and the user interface, mysqladmin, make absolutely no sense. Is this package
broken? It seems to be needed for php4-mysql, which is based on 
mysql-client-3.23.58. 

Is postgres any better? Does it work?

I'm trying to set up phpBB (not in pkgsrc), which requires a database
package.
-- 
Rick Kelly	rmk@rmkhome.com
		<http://www.rmkhome.com/>
		<http://rkba.rmkhome.com/>