Just want to confirm that xampp cannot be installed via yum in one go? It's a question of two options, one practically "out of the box": " To create the test database in phpMyAdmin: 1. Go to the XAMPP start page (localhost). 2. Select phpMyAdmin in the left navigator under Tools. 3. In the Create New Database field on the phpMyAdmin home page, enter hello_world and click Create." <http://aniraj.blogspot.com/2006/06/installation-of-apache-php-mysql-perl.html> the second: a "quick install" which goes into enormous detail. <http://wiki.cihar.com/pma/Quick_Install> Is there a reason xampp cannot simply be installed from yum? It looks simpler to compile the software per the first link than to install via yum and configure manually, while it should be the reverse. Why? thanks, Thufir