I have the same problem... everything was correct, as a matter of fact, I could use PHPMyAdmin when I had MySQL 3.23. Then I made and upgrade to MySQL 4.0.26 and the problem just came up...
I already tried to install php-mysql to slve this but just said that this packege were installed.
I also modify php.ini with the socket issue that changed to mysql.sock , restarting apache but didn´t work.
I also modify the directory extension = mysql.so to specify it but it didn´t work
I also made a link from /var/lib/mysql to /etc/mysql.so , but once again it didn´t work.
I check permission and something weir have becuase mysql directory has root as user and 27 as a group...I changed group to mysql but It didn´t work so I put it back 27.
Cannot load MySQL extension (PHPMyAdmin)
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