Success! I have seen a test table created in the master duplicated in the SME server as slave.
Since the adminstration of SME seems to depend on MySQL, (horde, at least) I am applyiing selective replication of only certain databases from the master. I use 'replicate-do-db = <mydatabase>' in the appropriate my.cnf fragment. Interested readers should be sure to read the documentation on this option. I am also seeing some warnings about table type, I think it has to do with restrictions to table type in SME server. But for purposes of this thread, the issue is RESOLVED.
It might help an interested reader to know the data directory for MySQL is /var/lib/mysql and this is typical for linux.
Thanks again to all who posted information and suggestions.