I'm a newbie MYSQL person.
Linux colxcvs001 2.4.21-9.0.3.ELsmp #1 SMP Tue Apr 20 19:49:13 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

I'm trying my initial installation of MYSQL mysql-standard-4.0.18-pc-linux-i686

After I invoke bin/mysqld_safe it fails

$ tail /var/log/mysqld.log
040430 7:48:42 InnoDB: Started
040430 7:48:42 Fatal error: Can't open privilege tables: Can't find file: './mysql/host.frm' (errno: 13)
040430 7:48:42 Aborting

040430 7:48:42 InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
040430 7:48:45 InnoDB: Shutdown completed
040430 7:48:45 /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld: Shutdown Complete

040430 07:48:45 mysqld ended
==================================================
Is there a site on the WEB where I could go research this error,
and possibly find potential solutions?
I am just rather clueless at this point in time as to what I need to do to fix it.

Do you run this as root? If you aren't, I'm guessing that the folder privileges are set wrong where the host.frm ends up. Sorry I'm running windows right now or I'd check the linux file structure to see where that folder is.

I'm trying to remember that it is in

/var/lib/mysql

but I might be wrong.

As for web sites to search, I always google error messages, there are almost always folks that have run into an error problem before.