How-To manage MySQL databases with phpMyAdmin

[eWebtricity]

Step 1:

Download and uncompress phpMyAdmin from http://www.phpmyadmin.net which is really a project managed via http://www.sourceforge.net mj

Note: You will want to download this to a domain that is only used and controlled by you (the administrator) anyone else who has FTP access to this domain/directory will be able to read the config.inc.php configuration file and learn your root password.


[root@server htdocs]# wget http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/phpmyadmin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz
--18:26:35-- http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/phpmyadmin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz
=> `phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz'
Resolving umn.dl.sourceforge.net... 128.101.240.209
Connecting to umn.dl.sourceforge.net[128.101.240.209]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 2,767,000 [application/x-gzip]
100%[================================================== =================>] 2,767,000 3.24M/s
18:26:36 (3.24 MB/s) - `phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz' saved [2,767,000/2,767,000]
[root@server htdocs]#
[root@server htdocs]# tar -zxvf phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1.tar.gz


Step 2:

Configure phpMyAdmin by editing the configuration file


[root@server htdocs]# cd phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1
[root@server phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1]# vi config.inc.php


Change the following values in the config.inc.php file to match your server setup


$cfg['PmaAbsoluteUri'] = 'http://server.yourdomain.com/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1';

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'randomcharctersgohere';

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie'; // Authentication method (config, http or cookie based)?
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = 'admin'; // MySQL user
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'yourpasswordhere'; // MySQL password (only needed
// with 'config' auth_type)


Thats it.

Now you should be able to use a web browser to login and manage your MySQL databases.

Note: I didn't go into detail but you should visit the http://www.phpmyadmin.net site if your interested in more functionality. There are a whole set of new features (bookmarks, comments, SQL-history, PDF-generation, field 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).