It's because even though Drupal 5.1 supports the mysqli protocol, which you can specify in settings.php, the update.php script does not. You must have the db url using mysql:// instead of mysqli:// or else it will skip all the updates and keep alerting you to update in the Administration panel.

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ms2011’s picture

ms2011 commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Nevermind... I can't reproduce the problem. I tried installing Drupal 4.7, using mysqli, and then upgrading to Drupal 5.1--but, it worked!

It may have been something quirky about the setup I was working with at the time. I seem to recall identifying the problematic code in core, but now its been too long and I don't recall where. So, I'm closing this since there's been no activity, and in the future I'll submit patches + and steps to reproduce.