MySQL ODBC - Error '523 80'

[Greg F]

Hi all -- I'm having trouble using ODBC from SAS to connect to a MySQL database. I think this is an ODBC setup issue. Please read on.

I have an internal Red Hat Linux (el6) x86_64 server (dev.myorg.com) running a MySQL server instance. Database works fine. Can connect via mysql client and also MySQL Workbench.

I downloaded and extracted the 64-bit Enterprise Red Hat MySQL ODBC library rpm from Oracle's website (mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.4-1.el6.x86_64.rpm) to my personal directory.
This is the right rpm for this architecture, I'm certain.
I do not have privs to install software as root. So I'm doing this in my own directories. I extracted the rpm file locally- my dir has these files in the lib64 subdirectory:

/prod/user/myapp/me/mysql_odbc_driver_5.3.4/usr/lib64/libmyodbc5a.so (ansi)
/prod/user/myapp/me/mysql_odbc_driver_5.3.4/usr/lib64/libmyodbc5w.so (unicode)

My $HOME/my_odbc.ini file looks like this. I'm pointing directly to the ODBC libraries here..

[ODBC]
IANAAppCodePage=4
InstallDir=/prod/user/myapp/me/mysql_odbc_driver_5.3.4/usr/lib64
Trace=1
TraceFile=
TraceDll=

[ODBC Data Sources]
data_source_name = devdbb

[devdbb]
Driver = /prod/user/myapp/me/mysql_odbc_driver_5.3.4/usr/lib64/libmyodbc5a.so
Description = Connector/ODBC 5.34 Driver DSN
SERVER = dev.myorg.com
PORT = 3306
USER = root
Password =
Database = test
OPTION = 3
SOCKET =


I did these commands:
--------
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/prod/user/myapp/me/mysql_odbc_driver_5.3.4/usr/lib64:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export ODBCINI=/prod/users/sasadm/me/my_odbc.ini

Finally I have a SAS test script which does this
--------
libname mytest odbc dsn=devdbb user=root password=newpwd cursor_type=dynamic;

This is the SAS 9.3 ODBC error I get. I am running 64-bit SAS by the way.
-------
1 libname mytest odbc dsn=devdbb user=root password=XXXXXX cursor_type=dynamic;
ERROR: CLI error trying to establish connection: 523 80
ERROR: Error in the LIBNAME statement.

My google searches revealed that '523 80' means the ODBC library cannot be loaded. Something is wrong with my ODBC setup I think. i tried 'libmyodbc5w.so' also with no luck.
Is there some impediment against my installing these libraries locally and not on the system as root? Please what am I missing here?
Any ideas how I can fix this? Thank you!