Some tips on how to install MySQL:

• MySQL installation
• MySQL root password
• MySQL database creation
• MySQL Adding a user
• mysqldump

• MySQL scripts
• MySQL date handling

As with many useful packages, people have found the things that MySQL doesn't do out of the box and provided solutions to those problems:

• Zmanda is an open source backup manager for MySQL. It's written in Perl and seems to be completely cross platform. You'll probably want to know where to find the Zmanda User Manual