the_bork

very. ??

You would think. But I did this enough times to ensure that I wasn’t entering info incorrectly. The only difference in the login details was the username and password. And as I said I used those details to log into mySQL from the terminal command line, and issued a USE command to access the db.
I’m moving on. If it happens to someone else, the answer is “Use root”.

As I said, I created “users”; root and one other. I used phpMyAdmin to create the second user, password, and privileges (all). I verified the user and access to mySQL from the command line, and phpMyAdmin login.

WP wouldn’t complete the install with the second user, only root. ?

Fixed. WP only allowed ‘root’ for install. (Why?) I’ll leave it here in the event that it might save someone time. Or in the event that someone has an explanation why an installation can’t proceed with a verified user (with full db privileges).

Agreed. Maybe someone will work on this? Seems like a really good way to granularize image displays.

The ability to seed tags across galleries is not a shortcoming. There are cases where an admin/editor may wish to select images from two or more galleries. As you discovered, putting a unique tag within a gallery will restrict the search result to that gallery.

Tags can be used: [nggtags gallery=aTag]