Ok, after more searching:
The admin php includes ../lib.php
the code reads:
// Open database connection.
function opendb() {
include('config.php');
extract($dbsettings);
$link = mysql_connect($server, $user, $pass) or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db($name) or die(mysql_error());
return $link;
}
Which looks fine to me, but not being a php programmer, I dont know.
Is there something wrong with the call??