Install and Configure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04: Free Web App

This tutorial on the Orcacore website intends to teach you to Install and Configure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04. phpMyAdmin is a free web application that provides a convenient GUI for working with the MySQL database management system. It is the most popular MySQL administration tool, used by millions of users worldwide, and has won numerous awards and honors.

With phpMyAdmin, you can do such things as:

• Create and remove users, manage user permissions
• Create, alter, and drop databases, tables, fields, and rows
• Search objects in the entire database or any particular tables
• Import and export data in different formats, including SQL, XML, and CSV
• Monitor processes and track the performance of different queries
• Execute user-defined SQL queries
• Back up your MySQL databases in manual mode

Steps To Install and Configure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04

To complete this guide, you need some requirements first. Let’s see what we need.

1. Requirements for phpMyAdmin Setup

1. log in to your server as a non-root user with sudo privileges and set up a basic ufw firewall. To this, you can check the Initial server setup article for Ubuntu 22.04.
2. Install LAMP stack on Ubuntu 22.04. You can visit our article about how to install the LAMP stack on Ubuntu 22.04.

When you are done with these requirements you can start to install and configure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04.

2. Create MySQL User for phpMyAdmin

At this point, you need to log in to your MariaDB shell with the command below:

sudo mysql -u root -p

From there, use the command below to create a user, here we named it ‘newuser’:

 CREATE USER 'newuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Grant all the privileges to it:

 GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'newuser'@'localhost';

Flush the privileges and exit:

 FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
 Exit;

3. Install phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04

Here we will install phpMyAdmin by downloading the zip file from the phpMyadmin Downloads page. Visit the page, check for the latest version, and copy the link address of the all languages zip file.

First, use the wget command to download the phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04:

sudo wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/5.2.1/phpMyAdmin-5.2.1-all-languages.zip

Next, you can extract your downloaded file with the command below:

sudo unzip phpMyAdmin-*-all-languages.zip

Here you need to move your extracted files to the /usr/share/phpmyadmin directory:

sudo mv phpMyAdmin-*-all-languages /usr/share/phpmyadmin

Switch the phpMyAdmin directory on Ubuntu 22.04 with the following command:

cd /usr/share/phpmyadmin

The sample configuration file for phpMyAdmin already exists in the directory. You just need to rename it with the following command:

sudo mv config.sample.inc.php config.inc.php

Also, you need to generate a secret string for the next steps. To do this, run the following command:

openssl rand -base64 32

In your output, you will see something similar to this:

Output
fdA3eu1hn2er64R4Q8laHXwi5DkqJAzZEOTwwyb0zYU=

4. Configure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04

At this point, you need to make some configuration changes to the file that you have renamed before.

Open the file with your favorite text editor, here we use vi editor:

sudo vi config.inc.php

At the file, find the line below and enter the secret string that you have generated before in it:

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

Next, find the ‘Directories for saving/loading files from server’ section and add the following line under this section:

$cfg['TempDir'] = '/tmp';

When you are done, save and close the file.

This temp directory that you have defined in the phpMyAdmin configuration file on Ubuntu 22.04, is used to store the cache files.

Now use the following command to create it:

sudo mkdir /usr/share/phpmyadmin/tmp

Then, set the ownership and correct permissions with the commands below:

# sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /usr/share/phpmyadmin 
# sudo chmod 777 /usr/share/phpmyadmin/tmp 

Create Apache configuration file for phpMyAdmin

Here you need to create an Apache configuration file for the phpMyAdmin files on Ubuntu 22.04.

Create and open the file with your favorite text editor, here we use vi:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/conf-available/phpmyadmin.conf 

Add the following contents to the file:

Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin

<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin/>
   AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
   <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
     # Apache 2.4
     <RequireAny>
      Require all granted
     </RequireAny>
   </IfModule>
</Directory>

<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin/setup/>
   <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
# Apache 2.4
     <RequireAny>
       Require all granted
     </RequireAny>
   </IfModule>
</Directory>

When you are done, save and close the file.

Restart Apache to apply the changes:

# sudo a2enconf phpmyadmin
# sudo systemctl restart apache2 

5. Access phpMyAdmin Login Page

At this point, you can access the phpMyAdmin web interface by typing your server’s IP address in your web browser followed by /phpmyadmin:

http://your-server-ip-address/phpmyadmin

You will see the phpMyAdmin login screen. Enter your MariaDB user and password that you have created before and press the Login button to see your phpMyAdmin dashboard.

That’s it, you are done. Enjoy using your phpMyAdmin.

Conclusion

At this point, you have learned to Install and Configure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04. phpMyAdmin is a free tool written in PHP that helps you handle the administration of MySQL over the Web.

Hope you enjoy it. You may also like these articles:

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