You're absolutely right, Brian. There was indeed a 'wikidb' database created. I simply didn't know how to look for it (simultaneous transition from Linux->Mac OSX and MySql 3.23->4.1 causing me confusion evidently). I can probably troubleshoot manually now, with the db created. I'll update the Mediawiki pages on Mac OSX installation with anything appropriate that I find. Thanks.

Brian Vibber wrote:

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Also the line states wikidb exists. In fact, when I check using the command line client, the wikidb does not in fact exist.

Well, that's an interesting twist. In order to get as far as it does, it would have had to test for the existence of various tables and fields in tables in the database... so you have a database *somewhere*. :)