Willy, the docs on MySQL's site have a lot of good information:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/optimize-overview.html
Also, Jeremy Zawodny's book "High Performance MySQL" (O'Reilly) is an
excellent guide to MySQL tuning, performance, replication - and it was
written for 4.1, right up your
Cover the basics first by looking at the SHOW STATUS results. You shold make yourself familiar with what these variables are telling
you. It'll help in determining your bottleneck.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/server-status-variables.html
Right of the bat, look at the Threads_created n
