I searched the forum on how to setup lamp, and i guessed right. everything was pretty much there with version 11.0. just have to mark MYSQL and Apache durring the install.
to start the database i did
since i need php5 for mediawiki i installed it as a package.
i also refrenced xushi's AMP install guide so i knew what files i needed to edit.
http://xushi.co.uk/guides/amp.php

i made a test.php like xushi has in his guide and i do get a webpage back saying it's working.

when i try to run the wiki php pages to setup, i see lots of code inside of them. it almost looks like it's not translating the php correctly.
im not too sure whatelse info i could put in here... im using the 2.6.17.13 kernel.

any idea's?

What does your mod_php.conf look like? Have you uncommented the mod_php.conf include line in httpd.conf?

Brian

im not at work right now so i can't post it and sorry it took so long to reply.
I did uncomment the line in the httpd.conf file.
and my mod_php.conf file was only changed to add in the libphp5.so (i think thats the file name) since i installed php5.

Hmm, If the setup pages aren't working I am pretty sure you haven't set up AMP correctly.

How about giving output of phpinfo()?

make a file named info.php with content
and see the output yourself or post it.

i did create a page that had that in there. everything appeared to be working.
and then when i tried to view the setup php page for mediawiki it was like part of the php code was working and part of it wasn't.

i scrolled down that page and it showed some errors about how certain settings were turned on. again im not at work just yet.. when i get there i will start to display what im seeing. anyhoot... i found the settings in the php.conf in the /etc/apache folder. but they were the oposite of what wiki was saying they were... if it said it was on, it was off in the file.. was really weird.... then there was a file that said php.conf.recomended in there as well. so i tried to use that one... ever since i switched php files... apache doesn't work anymore. it starts but when i type in http://localhost in the browser nothing comes up. i haven't looked at the logs to see why yet... this happened on friday when i was leaving work.. so like i said earlier i'll be sure to post output and such to be more helpful.

Okay so this morning i figured out my issue and i think i fixed my problem... well the AMP issue. i haven't trying running mediawiki yet.

Anyways, i started from scratch and blew away everything. what i was doing is installing php5 over php4. once i removed php4 and then installed php5 everything worked just dandy.

i will give a progress report on the mediawiki when done.

This might sound a little silly, but did you try refreshing your browser?
I faced similar problems when I installed wordpress on my machine awhile back: the initial PHP configuration was bad, so loading index.php showed only the code. Once I got PHP installed correctly, phpinfo() displayed correctly, but the wordpress links were still weird and continued to display code.. until I hit the refresh button.
Since then I cleaned my cache often while I was testing the site

Yeah, i checked that too.. and at the time still a no go. however i have everything up and running right now. i think it was all due to the fact i had php4 installed and i installed php5 over the top of it.. cuz once i removed both and installed php5 by itself everything worked right away.

Wiki is installed and working. im happy about that. got the setup completed and everything. once i moved the localsettings.php file over though and clicked on the link it told me the page didn't come up. it comes up with an error and the reason why is because it's forcing a www. in front of my FQDN. anyone know how to make that stop?

also, the other question i have is about MYSQL. durring the wiki configuration it asks for a mysql user. you can put in a new one or use the superuser. i tried having it create one for me but that didn't work. so i tried the superuser, which wasn't working either. i tried mysql and root. well i looked up some stuff and one step i missed from xushi's guide was this
however i don't understand it. once i added that, the mysql user worked... but before that i had already gone to that user to set a password (through KDE). if anyone can shed some light in that direction as well that would be very helpful.

About the mysql user problem you faced, that's because mysql users are independent of normal linux users. You can add users to mysql and grant them specific priveleges, and set passwords for them, etc, and this password is independent of the normal linux login/password for that user (you can give the same password if you want, of course)
Here's a post that explains this a little better.