I tried that --with-mysql on php5 and I believe you don't need that anymore. try compiling with out it.

Not sure if your OS supports "up2date" or another similar program. However, you are likely missing what I was on my RHEL box: php-mysql

"call to undefined function mysqal_connect()" or pconnect() whatever, means that one of your library modules that apache uses to make that kind of socket connection to myspl is not being included in your apache config file. i totally forget the syntax for this, but you have to explicitly state where this module that includes this function is located. which would be where all the other library modules are (i forget the name of this file too, "config?")