When asked to select a persistence mechanism for the jbpm installation, and one chooses mysql, it isn't clear what needs to be changed. After discovering that, ( though searching the forums ), you learn to create a database in mysql, then select that database and run the installer script located in the installation. However, it fails as there are no ';' (semi-colons) at the end of each statement. For my version of mysql, making those changes at least does not through an exception while trying to log in. It still does not allow login, but I think I've found that there are no default users(admin,user,manager, cookie-monster, etc.) in the install script.