can not use port other than default (3306)

Are you using Drupal 7? Due to the database changes, the 6.x version won't work with 7.x.

I did try to add a Drupal 7 branch, but then had difficulty managing two branches that were simultaneously sharing a lot of commits. You may be able to get the appropriate D7 db support patch from the git repo.

No, I'm using Drupal 6. and the Drupal 6 version of dbscripts from git. I had to set $databases['default'] in my setting.php as that is what seemed to be required by dbscripts - it didn't work without it.

In Drupal 6, your settings.php file should have $db_url as a string. What you have above is connection settings for Drupal 7.

If you are using the git repo, are you pointed at the master branch? I was trying to have D7 support, so master is compatible with D7 (based on the idea that a module's HEAD should be compatible with Drupal core's HEAD), while the 6.x-2.x branch is what you will be looking for.

That should get that branch for you.

I know my settings.php should have $db_url , and it does!... but I added $databases to get dbscripts to work. I'm sure I checked out from the D6 tree, but maybe not... I'll checkout again following the advice in your previous post tomorrow. Thanks.

In the DBTNG module I've had good luck using the parse_url function. It will return all the bits including port, url, protocol (i.e. mysl vs. mysqli) password, username and database.