This is a well respected plugin for PHP and MySQL users everywhere.
I do sometimes use
Webmin, but fellow contributor Nick Fratangelo reckons phpMyAdmin is the dog's bollocks, especially for certain MySQL configurations which he did explain to me but I've forgotten already.
Google and download
phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz [2.63M] (or its updated equivalent) to the
/usr/local/src directory or get later versions from
Sourceforge.net.
tar -zxvf phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz
cd phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1
Within there is a file called
Documentation.txt which outlines the installation procedure. Funny how it starts with telling you to tar -zxvf phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz, because you wouldn't be able to see the document unless you'd already untarred it. Ho hum..
Prerequisites include PHP 4.1.0 or newer and MySQL 3.23.32 or newer, so you might like to take a look at the
LAMP Server which shows how to get these fine services working first. Interestingly it doesn't explicitly list Apache as a prerequisite, but you'll be needing that too.
1. Installation
Basically phpMyAdmin just sits inside the Apache tree, where you can access its default
index.php file and configure stuff from there. There are a couple of configs to modify however.
Firstly extract the .tar.gz to
/usr/local/apache/htdocs or wherever Apache is installed. Rename (
mv) the default
/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1 directory name to something more convenient, like
pma. If you're really clever you could do it all in one bold command..
mv phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1 /usr/local/apache/htdocs/pma
2. Configuration
The instructions suggest to next open the file
config.inc.php in a text editor and change the values for
host,
user,
password and
authentication mode to fit your environment. Here, "host" means the MySQL server. Have a look at
Configuration section for an explanation of all values.
vi /usr/local/apache/pma/config.inc.php
Here are the two values I change:
a] Find the first instance of the string
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = ' ';
..and insert the computername of the server inside the single quotes at the end..
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'vampyre';
b] Find the first instance of the string
$cfg['PmaAbsoluteUri'] = ' ';
..and insert the absolute URL path to the phpMyAdmin directory, as you would connect from another computer. I find that
http://<ip address><path> works quite nicely..
$cfg['PmaAbsoluteUri'] = 'http://192.168.0.111/pma';
3. Security
This should be all you
have to do as far as installation and configuration go, however you will quite rightly get warnings about the lack of security. Personally I like to get phpMyAdmin working first and then password protect it afterwards; that way it's easier to diagnose any problems which might occur.
There are three main authentication methods - config, cookie and http; I prefer to use the latter. This authentication method requires a knowledge of
password protecting Apache.
a] Edit
config.inc.php once more..
vi /usr/local/apache/pma/config.inc.php
..and (just below the above settings) find the first instance of the string ..
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = 'root'; // MySQL user
Remove
root from the single quotes..
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = ''; // MySQL user
b] Finally, drop an
.htaccess file into the
/pma directory. An attempted connection from another computer should now be prompted for a username and password before allowing access to phpMyAdmin.
- A.
