How to Disable root Login in phpMyAdmin

Providing root user access over phpMyAdmin can be harmful to your database server. So we always recommend using normal database users in MySQL. This tutorial will help you to restrict/disable root login through phpMyAdmin.

Disable root Login

First of all, find our the PHPMyAdmin directory location as per installation. Generally, it is installed under /usr/share/phpmyadmin. Then edit phpMyAdmin configuration file config.inc.php

cd /usr/share/phpmyadmin
vim config.inc.php

and add/update following parameters:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowRoot'] = FALSE;

If there are no config.inc.php files found, create it by copying config.sample.inc.php file at the same location.

cp config.sample.inc.php config.inc.php

Verify Changes

Again open phpMyAdmin in a web browser and try login with root user. You will see “Access denied!” error message on screen.

References:
How to Install phpMyAdmin on CentOS using Yum
Setup phpMyAdmin on CentOS, RHEL and Fedora Using Source Files