mysql 4 -> mysql 5 newer hardware slower queries

[lance raymond]

Afternoon, the old sysadmin left so I am still learning mysql but we had a mysql 4 box on an older server with some hd problems. I staged a new CentOS5 box on a faster server (same RAM) controller, etc. and mysql 5.

I moved the website code to use this new server and now the site has become almost unusable. I am trying to see what's going on. I am goggling, but mytop doesn't seem to be available for mysql 5 and I just can't get mysql to start with the log slow query options.

It is installed via rpm, the my.cnf file looks like this now;
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
slow_query_log_file=/var/log/mysql_slow_query
log-slow-queries

I have tried numerous command line starts such as;
etc/init.d/mysqld start --log-slow-queries, etc. but none work, ps shows;

root 10259 0.0 0.0 4472 1088 ? S Jan27 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf --pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
mysql 10295 11.3 1.8 165716 37716 ? Sl Jan27 188:43 /usr/libexec/mysqld --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql --pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --skip-locking --socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock


Any help by the new guy trying to learn myslq is greatly appreciated.