21 November 2013

How to Install and Secure phpMyAdmin on Linux using Source Archive

Written by Rahul K.

phpMyAdmin is web-based client written in php programming languege for managing MySQL databases. It provides a user friendly web interface to access and manage your databases.

This article will help you to install phpMyAdmin on CentOS, RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and other Linux operating systems. Before installing PHPMyAdmin make sure that you have Apache, PHP and MySQL installed on the server. If you do not have them read our tutorials to how to install them.

Install Apache, MySQL, and PHP on CentOS and Redhat

Download Latest phpMyAdmin Archive

Download latest phpMyAdmin source code and extract on your system using. Click here to download latest or any older release of phpMyAdmin. This version compatible with PHP 5.5 to 7.1 and MySQL 5.5 and newer.

# cd /usr/share
# wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/4.6.6/phpMyAdmin-4.6.6-all-languages.zip

Extract archive using the following command and assign appropriate privileges.

# cd /usr/share
# tar xvzf phpMyAdmin-4.6.6-all-languages.zip
# mv phpMyAdmin-4.6.6-all-languages phpmyadmin
# cd phpmyadmin
# chown -R apache:apache .
# chmod -R 755 .

Setup Apache2 for phpMyAdmin

Create a new apache configuration file for phpMyAdmin /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf for RedHat based system and /etc/apache2/conf-available/phpmyadmin.conf for Debian based systems and add following settings there.

<Directory "/usr/share/phpmyadmin">
  Order Deny,Allow
  Deny from all
  Allow from 192.168.1.0/24
</Directory>

Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
Alias /phpMyAdmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin

Restart Apache Service.

After creating above configuration file we need to restart or reload apache service. I prefer to just reload on production servers.

# service httpd reload
$ sudo service apache2 reload

Access phpMyAdmin

Now you can access phpMyAdmin in a browser using the following URL. Change svr1.tecadmin.net with your server’s IP or hostname.

http://svr1.tecadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/
Login Details: Use MySQL username and password.

Congratulation’s You have successfully installed phpMyAdmin.

Rahul K.

I, Rahul Kumar is the founder and chief editor of TecAdmin.net. I am Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and working as IT professional since 2009.

12 Comments

me Reply to me

February 8, 2017 at 8:39 am

keep having 403 , I did “acces from all” since I dont need to filter the ip , it’s a local server
Alfakom.mk Reply to Alfakom.mk

January 22, 2015 at 12:27 pm

Your problems may have different solutions.
1. If you have previosely installed another version of phpmyadmin, then even if you’ve uninstalled it, the phpmyadmin folder remained, and folowing this tutorial instead of renaming the folder into phpmyadmin, you’ve moved it in the same folder as subfolder…
Solution:
# cd phpmyadmin
# ls
Check if there is only one folder (the name of the phpmyadmin version) and if so:
# mv phpMyAdmin-4.2.10-all-languages /usr/share/
# rm -r phpmyadmin
And then the rest of the process from this tutorial starting from:
# mv phpMyAdmin-4.2.10-all-languages phpmyadmin

2. Solution
# cd /usr/share/phpmyadmin/
# mv config.sample.inc.php config.inc.php
# vi config.inc.php
Edit this line and change the ‘cookie’ to ‘http’
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘auth_type’] = ‘cookie’;

Save the file restart httpd and try to connect.
I would suggest to comment the whole <directory part from phpMyAdmin.conf and generate a strong root password with
# mysql_secure_installation
So you can later authenticate as root user from your browser…

My comment wont do you any good, but better late than never. And also as a solution for all the other users which will have the same problem…
Aaditya Reply to Aaditya

December 1, 2014 at 9:39 pm

Hi Rahul,

Great post, and great site! It’s definitely helped me out a lot!

I have used this guide to install phpMyAdmin on my server, but I get a blank page when loading the url… First I had the 403 Access Forbidden error just as Ivan and Isma, but I changed the conf file as suggested, and now the page is just blank. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!
isma Reply to isma

October 14, 2014 at 8:02 am

Same problem than Ivan here!

Impossible to solve the “Forbidden”
Ivan Reply to Ivan

July 22, 2014 at 2:12 pm

Hi Rahul,
Thank you for your reply.
Here is the file, as you can see it’s exactly as yours.

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from all
#Allow from 192.168.1.0/24

Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
Alias /phpMyAdmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
Ivan Reply to Ivan

July 22, 2014 at 5:33 am

Hello Rahul,
Firstly, let me thank you for your wonderful tutorials, I’ve learned very much with your help.
Even though in this ocassion it’s been impossible to access PhpMyAdmin, I´ve installed and reinstalled every thing from scratch over and over again, created new Instances on Amazon, etc, however the result is always the same, this frustrating message: “Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /phpmyadmin/ on this server.”

I’d appreaciate very much any help you can provide to me.
Thank you in advance,

I’m using:
RHEL 7, MariaDB, PHP 5.4.30, Apache 2
(http://ec2-54-94-156-123.sa-east-1.compute.amazonaws.com/phpinfo.php)
- Rahul Reply to Rahul
  
  July 22, 2014 at 9:05 am
  
  Hi Ivan,
  
  Post your /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpMyAdmin.conf file content.
- Rahul Reply to Rahul
  
  July 22, 2014 at 9:07 am
  
  Hi Ivan,
  
  When you need to access phpMyAdmin from public network.. try to update phpMyAdmin.conf as below –
  
  Order Deny,Allow
  Deny from all
  Allow from all
  - Ivan Reply to Ivan
    
    July 23, 2014 at 2:08 am
    
    Hi Rahul,
    
    I retry several more times, followed every step, but it’s simply impossible, error 403 persists. I’ll terminate the instances on AWS and start all over again for the fourth time.
    
    Thanks anyways Rahul.
    - Rahul Reply to Rahul
      
      July 23, 2014 at 3:44 am
      
      Hi Ivan,
      
      If possible, provide me your server access. I can check it directly on your server. Contact me on my email.
Siddharth Reply to Siddharth

June 5, 2014 at 11:02 am

I have installed phpmyadmin by above method but i got below error.
“The mysqli extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration. See our documentation for more information.”

Tell me how to fix
- Rahul Reply to Rahul
  
  June 5, 2014 at 12:43 pm
  
  Hi Siddharth,
  
  Please install php-mysql extension first.