Installation

phpMyAdmin does not apply any special security methods to the MySQL database server. It is still the system administrator’s job to grant permissions on the MySQL databases properly. phpMyAdmin’s Users page can be used for this.

Warning

Mac users should note that if you are on a version before Mac OS X, StuffIt unstuffs with Mac formats. So you’ll have to resave as in BBEdit to Unix style ALL phpMyAdmin scripts before uploading them to your server, as PHP seems not to like Mac-style end of lines character (“\r”).

Linux distributions

phpMyAdmin is included in most Linux distributions. It is recommended to use distribution packages when possible - they usually provide integration to your distribution and you will automatically get security updates from your distribution.

Debian

Debian’s package repositories include a phpMyAdmin package, but be aware that the configuration file is maintained in /etc/phpmyadmin and may differ in some ways from the official phpMyAdmin documentation.

OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE already comes with phpMyAdmin package, just install packages from the openSUSE Build Service.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu ships phpMyAdmin package, however if you want to use recent version, you can use packages from PPA for Michal Čihař.

Gentoo

Gentoo ships the phpMyAdmin package, both in a near stock configuration as well as in a webapp-config configuration. Use emerge dev-db/phpmyadmin to install.

Mandriva

Mandriva ships the phpMyAdmin package in their contrib branch and can be installed via the usual Control Center.

Fedora

Fedora ships the phpMyAdmin package, but be aware that the configuration file is maintained in /etc/phpMyAdmin/ and may differ in some ways from the official phpMyAdmin documentation.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself and thus derivatives like CentOS don’t ship phpMyAdmin, but the Fedora-driven repository Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) is doing so, if it’s enabled. But be aware that the configuration file is maintained in /etc/phpMyAdmin/ and may differ in some ways from the official phpMyAdmin documentation.

Installing on Windows

The easiest way to get phpMyAdmin on Windows is using third party products which include phpMyAdmin together with a database and web server such as XAMPP.

You can find more of such options at Wikipedia.

Quick Install

  1. Choose an appropriate distribution kit from the phpmyadmin.net Downloads page. Some kits contain only the English messages, others contain all languages. We’ll assume you chose a kit whose name looks like phpMyAdmin-x.x.x -all-languages.tar.gz.
  2. Untar or unzip the distribution (be sure to unzip the subdirectories): tar -xzvf phpMyAdmin_x.x.x-all-languages.tar.gz in your webserver’s document root. If you don’t have direct access to your document root, put the files in a directory on your local machine, and, after step 4, transfer the directory on your web server using, for example, ftp.
  3. Ensure that all the scripts have the appropriate owner (if PHP is running in safe mode, having some scripts with an owner different from the owner of other scripts will be a problem). See 4.2 What’s the preferred way of making phpMyAdmin secure against evil access? and 1.26 I just installed phpMyAdmin in my document root of IIS but I get the error “No input file specified” when trying to run phpMyAdmin. for suggestions.
  4. Now you must configure your installation. There are two methods that can be used. Traditionally, users have hand-edited a copy of config.inc.php, but now a wizard-style setup script is provided for those who prefer a graphical installation. Creating a config.inc.php is still a quick way to get started and needed for some advanced features.

Manually creating the file

To manually create the file, simply use your text editor to create the file config.inc.php (you can copy config.sample.inc.php to get a minimal configuration file) in the main (top-level) phpMyAdmin directory (the one that contains index.php). phpMyAdmin first loads libraries/config.default.php and then overrides those values with anything found in config.inc.php. If the default value is okay for a particular setting, there is no need to include it in config.inc.php. You’ll probably need only a few directives to get going; a simple configuration may look like this:

<?php
// use here a value of your choice at least 32 chars long
$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = '1{dd0`<Q),5XP_:R9UK%%8\"EEcyH#{o';

$i=0;
$i++;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type']     = 'cookie';
?>

Or, if you prefer to not be prompted every time you log in:

<?php

$i=0;
$i++;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']          = 'root';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']      = 'cbb74bc'; // use here your password
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type']     = 'config';
?>

For a full explanation of possible configuration values, see the Configuration of this document.

Using Setup script

Instead of manually editing config.inc.php, you can use phpMyAdmin’s setup feature. The file can be generated using the setup and you can download it for upload to the server.

Next, open your browser and visit the location where you installed phpMyAdmin, with the /setup suffix. The changes are not saved to the server, you need to use the Download button to save them to your computer and then upload to the server.

Now the file is ready to be used. You can choose to review or edit the file with your favorite editor, if you prefer to set some advanced options which the setup script does not provide.

  1. If you are using the auth_type “config”, it is suggested that you protect the phpMyAdmin installation directory because using config does not require a user to enter a password to access the phpMyAdmin installation. Use of an alternate authentication method is recommended, for example with HTTP–AUTH in a .htaccess file or switch to using auth_type cookie or http. See the ISPs, multi-user installations for additional information, especially 4.4 phpMyAdmin always gives “Access denied” when using HTTP authentication..
  2. Open the main phpMyAdmin directory in your browser. phpMyAdmin should now display a welcome screen and your databases, or a login dialog if using HTTP or cookie authentication mode.
  3. You should deny access to the ./libraries and ./setup/lib subfolders in your webserver configuration. Such configuration prevents from possible path exposure and cross side scripting vulnerabilities that might happen to be found in that code. For the Apache webserver, this is often accomplished with a .htaccess file in those directories.
  4. It is generally a good idea to protect a public phpMyAdmin installation against access by robots as they usually can not do anything good there. You can do this using robots.txt file in root of your webserver or limit access by web server configuration, see 1.42 How can I prevent robots from accessing phpMyAdmin?.

phpMyAdmin configuration storage

For a whole set of additional features (bookmarks, comments, SQL-history, tracking mechanism, PDF-generation, column contents transformation, etc.) you need to create a set of special tables. Those tables can be located in your own database, or in a central database for a multi-user installation (this database would then be accessed by the controluser, so no other user should have rights to it).

Zero configuration

In many cases, this database structure can be automatically created and configured. This is called “Zero Configuration” mode and can be particularly useful in shared hosting situations. “Zeroconf” mode is on by default, to disable set $cfg['ZeroConf'] to false.

The following three scenarios are covered by the Zero Configuration mode:

  • When entering a database where the configuration storage tables are not present, phpMyAdmin offers to create them from the Operations tab.
  • When entering a database where the tables do already exist, the software automatically detects this and begins using them. This is the most common situation; after the tables are initially created automatically they are continually used without disturbing the user; this is also most useful on shared hosting where the user is not able to edit config.inc.php and usually the user only has access to one database.
  • When having access to multiple databases, if the user first enters the database containing the configuration storage tables then switches to another database, phpMyAdmin continues to use the tables from the first database; the user is not prompted to create more tables in the new database.

Manual configuration

Please look at your ./sql/ directory, where you should find a file called create_tables.sql. (If you are using a Windows server, pay special attention to 1.23 I’m running MySQL on a Win32 machine. Each time I create a new table the table and column names are changed to lowercase!).

If you already had this infrastructure and:

  • upgraded to MySQL 4.1.2 or newer, please use sql/upgrade_tables_mysql_4_1_2+.sql.
  • upgraded to phpMyAdmin 4.3.0 or newer from 2.5.0 or newer (<= 4.2.x), please use sql/upgrade_column_info_4_3_0+.sql.

and then create new tables by importing sql/create_tables.sql.

You can use your phpMyAdmin to create the tables for you. Please be aware that you may need special (administrator) privileges to create the database and tables, and that the script may need some tuning, depending on the database name.

After having imported the sql/create_tables.sql file, you should specify the table names in your config.inc.php file. The directives used for that can be found in the Configuration.

You will also need to have a controluser ($cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] and $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] settings) with the proper rights to those tables. For example you can create it using following statement:

GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON <pma_db>.* TO 'pma'@'localhost'  IDENTIFIED BY 'pmapass';

Upgrading from an older version

Never extract the new version over an existing installation of phpMyAdmin; we had evidence of problems caused by this.

Simply copy config.inc.php from your previous installation into the newly unpacked one. Configuration files from old versions may require some tweaking as some options have been changed or removed. For compatibility with PHP 5.3 and later, remove a set_magic_quotes_runtime(0); statement that you might find near the end of your configuration file.

You should not copy libraries/config.default.php over config.inc.php because the default configuration file is version- specific.

If you have upgraded your MySQL server from a version previous to 4.1.2 to version 5.x or newer and if you use the phpMyAdmin configuration storage, you should run the SQL script found in sql/upgrade_tables_mysql_4_1_2+.sql.

If you have upgraded your phpMyAdmin to 4.3.0 or newer from 2.5.0 or newer (<= 4.2.x) and if you use the phpMyAdmin configuration storage, you should run the SQL script found in sql/upgrade_column_info_4_3_0+.sql.

Using authentication modes

HTTP and cookie authentication modes are recommended in a multi-user environment where you want to give users access to their own database and don’t want them to play around with others. Nevertheless be aware that MS Internet Explorer seems to be really buggy about cookies, at least till version 6. Even in a single-user environment, you might prefer to use HTTP or cookie mode so that your user/password pair are not in clear in the configuration file.

HTTP and cookie authentication modes are more secure: the MySQL login information does not need to be set in the phpMyAdmin configuration file (except possibly for the $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser']). However, keep in mind that the password travels in plain text, unless you are using the HTTPS protocol. In cookie mode, the password is stored, encrypted with the AES algorithm, in a temporary cookie.

Then each of the true users should be granted a set of privileges on a set of particular databases. Normally you shouldn’t give global privileges to an ordinary user, unless you understand the impact of those privileges (for example, you are creating a superuser). For example, to grant the user real_user with all privileges on the database user_base:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON user_base.* TO 'real_user'@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'real_password';

What the user may now do is controlled entirely by the MySQL user management system. With HTTP or cookie authentication mode, you don’t need to fill the user/password fields inside the $cfg['Servers'].

HTTP authentication mode

Signon authentication mode

The very basic example of saving credentials in a session is available as examples/signon.php:

<?php
/* vim: set expandtab sw=4 ts=4 sts=4: */
/**
 * Single signon for phpMyAdmin
 *
 * This is just example how to use session based single signon with
 * phpMyAdmin, it is not intended to be perfect code and look, only
 * shows how you can integrate this functionality in your application.
 *
 * @package    PhpMyAdmin
 * @subpackage Example
 */

/* Need to have cookie visible from parent directory */
session_set_cookie_params(0, '/', '', true, true);
/* Create signon session */
$session_name = 'SignonSession';
session_name($session_name);
// Uncomment and change the following line to match your $cfg['SessionSavePath']
//session_save_path('/foobar');
@session_start();

/* Was data posted? */
if (isset($_POST['user'])) {
    /* Store there credentials */
    $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_user'] = $_POST['user'];
    $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_password'] = $_POST['password'];
    $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_host'] = $_POST['host'];
    $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_port'] = $_POST['port'];
    /* Update another field of server configuration */
    $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_cfgupdate'] = array('verbose' => 'Signon test');
    $id = session_id();
    /* Close that session */
    @session_write_close();
    /* Redirect to phpMyAdmin (should use absolute URL here!) */
    header('Location: ../index.php');
} else {
    /* Show simple form */
    header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
    echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>' . "\n";
    ?>
    <!DOCTYPE HTML>
    <html lang="en" dir="ltr">
    <head>
    <link rel="icon" href="../favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="../favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <title>phpMyAdmin single signon example</title>
    </head>
    <body>
    <?php
    if (isset($_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_error_message'])) {
        echo '<p class="error">';
        echo $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_error_message'];
        echo '</p>';
    }
    ?>
    <form action="signon.php" method="post">
    Username: <input type="text" name="user" /><br />
    Password: <input type="password" name="password" /><br />
    Host: (will use the one from config.inc.php by default)
    <input type="text" name="host" /><br />
    Port: (will use the one from config.inc.php by default)
    <input type="text" name="port" /><br />
    <input type="submit" />
    </form>
    </body>
    </html>
    <?php
}
?>

Alternatively you can also use this way to integrate with OpenID as shown in examples/openid.php:

<?php
/* vim: set expandtab sw=4 ts=4 sts=4: */
/**
 * Single signon for phpMyAdmin using OpenID
 *
 * This is just example how to use single signon with phpMyAdmin, it is
 * not intended to be perfect code and look, only shows how you can
 * integrate this functionality in your application.
 *
 * It uses OpenID pear package, see http://pear.php.net/package/OpenID
 *
 * User first authenticates using OpenID and based on content of $AUTH_MAP
 * the login information is passed to phpMyAdmin in session data.
 *
 * @package    PhpMyAdmin
 * @subpackage Example
 */

if (false === @include_once 'OpenID/RelyingParty.php') {
    exit;
}

/**
 * Map of authenticated users to MySQL user/password pairs.
 */
$AUTH_MAP = array(
    'http://launchpad.net/~username' => array(
        'user' => 'root',
        'password' => '',
        ),
    );

/**
 * Simple function to show HTML page with given content.
 *
 * @param string $contents Content to include in page
 *
 * @return void
 */
function Show_page($contents)
{
    header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
    echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>' . "\n";
    ?>
    <!DOCTYPE HTML>
    <html lang="en" dir="ltr">
    <head>
    <link rel="icon" href="../favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="../favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <title>phpMyAdmin OpenID signon example</title>
    </head>
    <body>
    <?php
    if (isset($_SESSION) && isset($_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_error_message'])) {
        echo '<p class="error">' . $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_message'] . '</p>';
        unset($_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_message']);
    }
    echo $contents;
    ?>
    </body>
    </html>
    <?php
}

function Die_error($e)
{
    $contents = "<div class='relyingparty_results'>\n";
    $contents .= "<pre>" . htmlspecialchars($e->getMessage()) . "</pre>\n";
    $contents .= "</div class='relyingparty_results'>";
    Show_page($contents);
    exit;
}


/* Need to have cookie visible from parent directory */
session_set_cookie_params(0, '/', '', true, true);
/* Create signon session */
$session_name = 'SignonSession';
session_name($session_name);
@session_start();

// Determine realm and return_to
$base = 'http';
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] == 'on') {
    $base .= 's';
}
$base .= '://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . ':' . $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'];

$realm = $base . '/';
$returnTo = $base . dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
if ($returnTo[/*overload*/mb_strlen($returnTo) - 1] != '/') {
    $returnTo .= '/';
}
$returnTo .= 'openid.php';

/* Display form */
if (!count($_GET) && !count($_POST) || isset($_GET['phpMyAdmin'])) {
    /* Show simple form */
    $content = '<form action="openid.php" method="post">
OpenID: <input type="text" name="identifier" /><br />
<input type="submit" name="start" />
</form>
</body>
</html>';
    Show_page($content);
    exit;
}

/* Grab identifier */
if (isset($_POST['identifier']) && is_string($_POST['identifier'])) {
    $identifier = $_POST['identifier'];
} else if (isset($_SESSION['identifier']) && is_string($_SESSION['identifier'])) {
    $identifier = $_SESSION['identifier'];
} else {
    $identifier = null;
}

/* Create OpenID object */
try {
    $o = new OpenID_RelyingParty($returnTo, $realm, $identifier);
} catch (Exception $e) {
    Die_error($e);
}

/* Redirect to OpenID provider */
if (isset($_POST['start'])) {
    try {
        $authRequest = $o->prepare();
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        Die_error($e);
    }

    $url = $authRequest->getAuthorizeURL();

    header("Location: $url");
    exit;
} else {
    /* Grab query string */
    if (!count($_POST)) {
        list(, $queryString) = explode('?', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
    } else {
        // I hate php sometimes
        $queryString = file_get_contents('php://input');
    }

    /* Check reply */
    try {
        $message = new OpenID_Message($queryString, OpenID_Message::FORMAT_HTTP);
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        Die_error($e);
    }

    $id = $message->get('openid.claimed_id');

    if (!empty($id) && isset($AUTH_MAP[$id])) {
        $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_user'] = $AUTH_MAP[$id]['user'];
        $_SESSION['PMA_single_signon_password'] = $AUTH_MAP[$id]['password'];
        session_write_close();
        /* Redirect to phpMyAdmin (should use absolute URL here!) */
        header('Location: ../index.php');
    } else {
        Show_page('<p>User not allowed!</p>');
        exit;
    }
}

If you intend to pass the credentials using some other means than, you have to implement wrapper in PHP to get that data and set it to $cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonScript']. There is very minimal example in examples/signon-script.php:

<?php
/* vim: set expandtab sw=4 ts=4 sts=4: */
/**
 * Single signon for phpMyAdmin
 *
 * This is just example how to use script based single signon with
 * phpMyAdmin, it is not intended to be perfect code and look, only
 * shows how you can integrate this functionality in your application.
 *
 * @package    PhpMyAdmin
 * @subpackage Example
 */


/**
 * This function returns username and password.
 *
 * It can optionally use configured username as parameter.
 *
 * @param string $user User name
 *
 * @return array
 */
function get_login_credentials($user)
{
    /* Optionally we can use passed username */
    if (!empty($user)) {
        return array($user, 'password');
    }

    /* Here we would retrieve the credentials */
    $credentials = array('root', '');

    return $credentials;
}

?>

See also

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'], $cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonSession'], $cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonScript'], $cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonURL']

Config authentication mode

  • This mode is sometimes the less secure one because it requires you to fill the $cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] and $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] fields (and as a result, anyone who can read your config.inc.php can discover your username and password).
  • In the ISPs, multi-user installations section, there is an entry explaining how to protect your configuration file.
  • For additional security in this mode, you may wish to consider the Host authentication $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['order'] and $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['rules'] configuration directives.
  • Unlike cookie and http, does not require a user to log in when first loading the phpMyAdmin site. This is by design but could allow any user to access your installation. Use of some restriction method is suggested, perhaps a .htaccess file with the HTTP-AUTH directive or disallowing incoming HTTP requests at one’s router or firewall will suffice (both of which are beyond the scope of this manual but easily searchable with Google).

Securing your phpMyAdmin installation

The phpMyAdmin team tries hard to make the application secure, however there are always ways to make your installation more secure:

  • Remove the setup directory from phpMyAdmin, you will probably not use it after the initial setup.
  • Properly choose an authentication method - Cookie authentication mode is probably the best choice for shared hosting.
  • In case you don’t want all MySQL users to be able to access phpMyAdmin, you can use $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['rules'] to limit them.
  • Consider hiding phpMyAdmin behind an authentication proxy, so that users need to authenticate prior to providing MySQL credentials to phpMyAdmin.
  • If you are afraid of automated attacks, enabling Captcha by $cfg['CaptchaLoginPublicKey'] and $cfg['CaptchaLoginPrivateKey'] might be an option.