changed in /etc/php.ini, in the section [MySQL] from:
mysql.default_socket = /var/mysql/mysql.sock
to
mysql.default_socket = /mysql/mysql.sock
then restarted apache
Thanks for the advice and responses. While I'm new to both Zencart and php, I'm not new to web computing (java and ruby) nor bsd unix so configuring mybox correctly was the best solution for me, now all my php work will access mysql correctle as my ruby does.
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