30 KiB
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.
Installing using Composer
You can install phpMyAdmin using Composer, however it's currently not available in the default Packagist repository due to its technical limitations.
The installation is possible by adding our own repository <https://www.phpmyadmin.net/packages.json>:
composer create-project phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin --repository-url=https://www.phpmyadmin.net/packages.json --no-dev
Installing using Docker
phpMyAdmin comes with a Docker image, which you can easily deploy. You can download it using:
docker pull phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
The phpMyAdmin server will be executed on port 80. It supports several ways of configuring the link to the database server, which you can manage using environment variables:
PMA_ARBITRARY
Allows you to enter database server hostname on login form (see :config$cfg['AllowArbitraryServer']
).
PMA_HOST
Host name or IP address of the database server to use.
PMA_HOSTS
Comma separated host names or IP addresses of the database servers to use.
PMA_USER
User name to use for auth_config
.
PMA_PASSWORD
Password to use for auth_config
.
PMA_PORT
Port of the databse server to use.
PMA_ABSOLUTE_URI
The fully-qualified path (https://pma.example.net/
) where the reverse proxy makes phpMyAdmin available.
By default, cookie
is used, but if PMA_USER
and PMA_PASSWORD
are set, it is switched to auth_config
.
Additionally configuration can be tweaked by /config.user.inc.php
. If this file exists, it will be loaded after configuration generated from above environment variables, so you can override any configuration variable. This configuraiton can be added as a volume when invoking docker using -v /some/local/directory/config.user.inc.php:/config.user.inc.php parameters.
See config
for detailed description of configuration options.
Docker Examples
To connect phpMyAdmin to given server use:
docker run --name myadmin -d -e PMA_HOST=dbhost -p 8080:80 phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
To connect phpMyAdmin to more servers use:
docker run --name myadmin -d -e PMA_HOSTS=dbhost1,dbhost2,dbhost3 -p 8080:80 phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
To use arbitrary server option:
docker run --name myadmin -d --link mysql_db_server:db -p 8080:80 -e PMA_ARBITRARY=1 phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
You can also link the database container using Docker:
docker run --name phpmyadmin -d --link mysql_db_server:db -p 8080:80 phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
Running with additional configration:
docker run --name phpmyadmin -d --link mysql_db_server:db -p 8080:80 -v /some/local/directory/config.user.inc.php:/config.user.inc.php phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
Using docker-compose
Alternatively you can also use docker-compose with the docker-compose.yml from <https://github.com/phpmyadmin/docker>. This will run phpMyAdmin with arbitrary server - allowing you to specify MySQL/MariaDB server on login page.
docker-compose up -d
Quick Install
- 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
. - Ensure you have downloaded a genuine archive, see
verify
. - 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. - 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
faq4_2
andfaq1_26
for suggestions. - 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 aconfig.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 config
of this document.
Setup script
Using Setup script
Instead of manually editing config.inc.php
, you can use phpMyAdmin's setup feature. First you must manually create a folder config
in the phpMyAdmin directory. This is a security measure. On a Linux/Unix system you can use the following commands:
cd phpMyAdmin
mkdir config # create directory for saving
chmod o+rw config # give it world writable permissions
And to edit an existing configuration, copy it over first:
cp config.inc.php config/ # copy current configuration for editing
chmod o+w config/config.inc.php # give it world writable permissions
Note
Debian and Ubuntu have simplified this setup and all you need to do is to execute /usr/sbin/pma-configure
.
On other platforms, simply create the folder and ensure that your web server has read and write access to it. faq1_26
can help with this.
Next, open your browser and visit the location where you installed phpMyAdmin, with the /setup
suffix. If you have an existing configuration, use the Load
button to bring its content inside the setup panel. Note that changes are not saved to disk until you explicitly choose ``Save`` from the Configuration area of the screen. Normally the script saves the new config.inc.php
to the config/
directory, but if the webserver does not have the proper permissions you may see the error "Cannot load or save configuration." Ensure that the config/
directory exists and has the proper permissions - or use the Download
link to save the config file locally and upload it (via FTP or some similar means) to the proper location.
Once the file has been saved, it must be moved out of the config/
directory and the permissions must be reset, again as a security measure:
mv config/config.inc.php . # move file to current directory
chmod o-rw config.inc.php # remove world read and write permissions
rm -rf config # remove not needed directory
Note
Debian and Ubuntu have simplified this setup and all you need to do is to execute /usr/sbin/pma-secure
.
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.
- 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 usingauth_type
cookie or http. See thefaqmultiuser
for additional information, especiallyfaq4_4
. - 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. - 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. - 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, seefaq1_42
.
Verifying phpMyAdmin releases
Since July 2015 all phpMyAdmin releases are cryptographically signed by the releasing developer, who through January 2016 was Marc Delisle. His key id is 0xFEFC65D181AF644A, his PGP fingerprint is:
436F F188 4B1A 0C3F DCBF 0D79 FEFC 65D1 81AF 644A
and you can get more identification information from <https://keybase.io/lem9>.
Beginning in January 2016, the release manager is Isaac Bennetch. His key id is 0xCE752F178259BD92, and his PGP fingerprint is:
3D06 A59E CE73 0EB7 1B51 1C17 CE75 2F17 8259 BD92
and you can get more identification information from <https://keybase.io/ibennetch>.
Some additional downloads (for example themes) might be signed by Michal Čihař. His key id is 0x9C27B31342B7511D, and his PGP fingerprint is:
63CB 1DF1 EF12 CF2A C0EE 5A32 9C27 B313 42B7 511D
and you can get more identification information from <https://keybase.io/nijel>.
You should verify that the signature matches the archive you have downloaded. This way you can be sure that you are using the same code that was released.
Each archive is accompanied with .asc
files which contains the PGP signature for it. Once you have both of them in the same folder, you can verify the signature:
$ gpg --verify phpMyAdmin-4.5.4.1-all-languages.zip.asc
gpg: Signature made Fri 29 Jan 2016 08:59:37 AM EST using RSA key ID 8259BD92
gpg: Can't check signature: public key not found
As you can see gpg complains that it does not know the public key. At this point you should do one of the following steps:
- Download the keyring from our download server, then import it with:
$ gpg --import phpmyadmin.keyring
- Download and import the key from one of the key servers:
$ gpg --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 3D06A59ECE730EB71B511C17CE752F178259BD92
gpg: requesting key 8259BD92 from hkp server pgp.mit.edu
gpg: key 8259BD92: public key "Isaac Bennetch <bennetch@gmail.com>" imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)
This will improve the situation a bit - at this point you can verify that the signature from the given key is correct but you still can not trust the name used in the key:
$ gpg --verify phpMyAdmin-4.5.4.1-all-languages.zip.asc
gpg: Signature made Fri 29 Jan 2016 08:59:37 AM EST using RSA key ID 8259BD92
gpg: Good signature from "Isaac Bennetch <bennetch@gmail.com>"
gpg: aka "Isaac Bennetch <isaac@bennetch.org>"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 3D06 A59E CE73 0EB7 1B51 1C17 CE75 2F17 8259 BD92
The problem here is that anybody could issue the key with this name. You need to ensure that the key is actually owned by the mentioned person. The GNU Privacy Handbook covers this topic in the chapter Validating other keys on your public keyring. The most reliable method is to meet the developer in person and exchange key fingerprints, however you can also rely on the web of trust. This way you can trust the key transitively though signatures of others, who have met the developer in person. For example you can see how Isaac's key links to Linus's key.
Once the key is trusted, the warning will not occur:
$ gpg --verify phpMyAdmin-4.5.4.1-all-languages.zip.asc
gpg: Signature made Fri 29 Jan 2016 08:59:37 AM EST using RSA key ID 8259BD92
gpg: Good signature from "Isaac Bennetch <bennetch@gmail.com>" [full]
Should the signature be invalid (the archive has been changed), you would get a clear error regardless of the fact that the key is trusted or not:
$ gpg --verify phpMyAdmin-4.5.4.1-all-languages.zip.asc
gpg: Signature made Fri 29 Jan 2016 08:59:37 AM EST using RSA key ID 8259BD92
gpg: BAD signature from "Isaac Bennetch <bennetch@gmail.com>" [unknown]
single: Configuration storage single: phpMyAdmin configuration storage single: pmadb
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 :config$cfg['ZeroConf']
to false.
The following three scenarios are covered by the Zero Configuration mode:
- When entering a database where the configuration storage tables are not present, phpMyAdmin offers to create them from the Operations tab.
- When entering a database where the tables do already exist, the software automatically detects this and begins using them. This is the most common situation; after the tables are initially created automatically they are continually used without disturbing the user; this is also most useful on shared hosting where the user is not able to edit
config.inc.php
and usually the user only has access to one database. - When having access to multiple databases, if the user first enters the database containing the configuration storage tables then switches to another database, phpMyAdmin continues to use the tables from the first database; the user is not prompted to create more tables in the new database.
Manual configuration
Please look at your ./sql/
directory, where you should find a file called create_tables.sql. (If you are using a Windows server, pay special attention to faq1_23
).
If you already had this infrastructure and:
- upgraded to MySQL 4.1.2 or newer, please use
sql/upgrade_tables_mysql_4_1_2+.sql
. - upgraded to phpMyAdmin 4.3.0 or newer from 2.5.0 or newer (<= 4.2.x), please use
sql/upgrade_column_info_4_3_0+.sql
.
and then create new tables by importing sql/create_tables.sql
.
You can use your phpMyAdmin to create the tables for you. Please be aware that you may need special (administrator) privileges to create the database and tables, and that the script may need some tuning, depending on the database name.
After having imported the sql/create_tables.sql
file, you should specify the table names in your config.inc.php
file. The directives used for that can be found in the config
.
You will also need to have a controluser (:config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser']
and :config$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
Warning
Never extract the new version over an existing installation of phpMyAdmin, always first remove the old files keeping just the configuration.
This way you will not leave old no longer working code in the directory, which can have severe security implications or can cause various breakages.
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
.
Do not forget to clear the browser cache and to empty the old session by logging out and logging in again.
Authentication mode
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 :config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser']
). However, keep in mind that the password travels in plain text, unless you are using the HTTPS protocol. In cookie mode, the password is stored, encrypted with the AES algorithm, in a temporary cookie.
Then each of the true users should be granted a set of privileges on a set of particular databases. Normally you shouldn't give global privileges to an ordinary user, unless you understand the impact of those privileges (for example, you are creating a superuser). For example, to grant the user real_user with all privileges on the database user_base:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON user_base.* TO 'real_user'@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'real_password';
What the user may now do is controlled entirely by the MySQL user management system. With HTTP or cookie authentication mode, you don't need to fill the user/password fields inside the :config$cfg['Servers']
.
pair: HTTP; Authentication mode
HTTP authentication mode
Uses
HTTP
Basic authentication method and allows you to log in as any valid MySQL user.Is supported with most PHP configurations. For
IIS
(ISAPI
) support usingCGI
PHP seefaq1_32
, for using with ApacheCGI
seefaq1_35
.When PHP is running under Apache's
mod_proxy_fcgi
(e.g. with PHP-FPM),Authorization
headers are not passed to the underlying FCGI application, such that your credentials will not reach the application. In this case, you can add the following configuration directive:Authorization "(.*)" HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=$1 SetEnvIf
See also
faq4_4
about not using the.htaccess
mechanism along with 'HTTP
' authentication mode.
pair: Cookie; Authentication mode
Cookie authentication mode
- Username and password are stored in cookies during the session and password is deleted when it ends.
- With this mode, the user can truly log out of phpMyAdmin and log back in with the same username.
- If you want to allow users to enter any hostname to connect (rather than only servers that are configured in
config.inc.php
), see the :config$cfg['AllowArbitraryServer']
directive. - As mentioned in the
require
section, having themcrypt
extension will speed up access considerably, but is not required.
pair: Signon; Authentication mode
Signon authentication mode
- This mode is a convenient way of using credentials from another application to authenticate to phpMyAdmin to implement single signon solution.
- The other application has to store login information into session data (see :config
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonSession']
) or you need to implement script to return the credentials (see :config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonScript']
). - When no credentials are available, the user is being redirected to :config
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonURL']
, where you should handle the login process.
The very basic example of saving credentials in a session is available as examples/signon.php
:
../examples/signon.php
Alternatively you can also use this way to integrate with OpenID as shown in examples/openid.php
:
../examples/openid.php
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 :config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonScript']
. There is very minimal example in examples/signon-script.php
:
../examples/signon-script.php
:config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type']
, :config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonSession']
, :config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonScript']
, :config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['SignonURL']
pair: Config; Authentication mode
Config authentication mode
- This mode is sometimes the less secure one because it requires you to fill the :config
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']
and :config$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']
fields (and as a result, anyone who can read yourconfig.inc.php
can discover your username and password). - In the
faqmultiuser
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 :config
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['order']
and :config$cfg['Servers'][$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:
Serve phpMyAdmin on HTTPS only. Preferably, you should use HSTS as well, so that you're protected from protocol downgrade attacks.
Remove the
setup
directory from phpMyAdmin, you will probably not use it after the initial setup.Properly choose an authentication method -
cookie
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 :config
$cfg['Servers'][$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. You can achieve this by configuring your web server to request HTTP authentication. For example in Apache this can be done with:
AuthType Basic "Restricted Access" AuthName /usr/share/phpmyadmin/passwd AuthUserFile valid-user Require
Once you have changed the configuration, you need to create a list of users which can authenticate. This can be done using the
htpasswd
utility:htpasswd -c /usr/share/phpmyadmin/passwd username
If you are afraid of automated attacks, enabling Captcha by :config
$cfg['CaptchaLoginPublicKey']
and :config$cfg['CaptchaLoginPrivateKey']
might be an option.
Known issues
Users with column-specific privileges are unable to "Browse"
If a user has only column-specific privileges on some (but not all) columns in a table, "Browse" will fail with an error message.
As a workaround, a bookmarked query with the same name as the table can be created, this will run when using the "Browse" link instead. Issue 11922.
Trouble logging back in after logging out using 'http' authentication
When using the 'http' auth_type
, it can be impossible to log back in (when the logout comes manually or after a period of inactivity). Issue 11898.