as part of that mysql invocation, add
-u root -p
when you run it, it will prompt you for the mysql root password (if you've not set that up, just hit return)
thanks for that - its been going along now for 3 hours or so, with about 1Gb or so to go, I hope
once it has finished, i guess i better move onto the links one, and then to images.... i see that this is a very time consumming process
if anyone could explain what I should do, after i have imported in the above files aswell - that would be great... like does it just magically appear in mediawiki, or what happens?