PhpMyAdmin

Prerequisite

To install PhpMyAdmin, you will need to have Nginx, PHP, MariaDB and Let’s Encrypt installed.

Install

$ sudo apt install phpmyadmin

The installer will ask you several questions. Here are the answers:

Web server to reconfigure automatically?

Choose none. Nginx will be configured later.

Configure database for phpmyadmin with dbconfig-common?

Yes

Password of the database's administrative user?

Enter your MariaDB root user password.

MySQL application password for phpmyadmin?

Keep it empty to get a random one. You will never need to enter this password

Configure

PHP

Edit file /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/local-common.ini and add folders /usr/share/phpmyadmin/:/etc/phpmyadmin/:/var/lib/phpmyadmin/ to the open_basedir setting.

Nginx

1. Create the config file /etc/nginx/sites-available/phpmyadmin.example.org

   server {
       include snippets/listen-http.conf;
       server_name phpmyadmin.example.org;
   
       access_log /var/log/nginx/phpmyadmin.example.org.access.log;
       error_log /var/log/nginx/phpmyadmin.example.org.error.log info;
   
       include snippets/acme-challenge.conf;
       include snippets/https-permanent-redirect.conf;
   }
   
   server {
       include snippets/listen-https.conf;
       server_name phpmyadmin.example.org;
   
       access_log /var/log/nginx/phpmyadmin.example.org.access.log;
       error_log /var/log/nginx/phpmyadmin.example.org.error.log info;
   
       include snippets/acme-challenge.conf;
       #include snippets/ssl.conf;
       #ssl_certificate      /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.example.org/fullchain.pem;
       #ssl_certificate_key  /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.example.org/privkey.pem;
       #include snippets/hsts.conf;
   
       add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
       add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
       add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
       add_header X-Robots-Tag none;
   
       #auth_basic            "Restricted";
       #auth_basic_user_file  .htpasswd;
   
       root /usr/share/phpmyadmin/;
   
       index index.php;
   
       location ~ \.php$ {
           try_files $uri =404;
           include fastcgi.conf;
           fastcgi_pass php;
       }
   }
   

2. Activate the configuration with

   $ sudo nginx_modsite -e phpmyadmin.example.org
   Would you like to reload the Nginx configuration now? (Y/n) Y
   

3. Edit file /usr/local/etc/certmanage/main.json and add the following to the list

   {
       "domains": ["phpmyadmin.example.org"],
       "reload": [["/bin/systemctl", "reload", "nginx.service"]]
   }
   

4. Get your certificate

   $ sudo /usr/local/sbin/certmanage
   Renewing certificate for phpmyadmin.example.org that will expire on 0001-01-01
   
   Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
   Starting new HTTPS connection (1): acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org
   Obtaining a new certificate
   Performing the following challenges:
   http-01 challenge for phpmyadmin.example.org
   Using the webroot path /var/www/acme-challenge for all unmatched domains.
   Waiting for verification...
   Cleaning up challenges
   Generating key (2048 bits): /etc/letsencrypt/keys/1764_key-certbot.pem
   Creating CSR: /etc/letsencrypt/csr/1764_csr-certbot.pem
   
   IMPORTANT NOTES:
    - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at
      /etc/letsencrypt/live/phpmyadmin.example.org/fullchain.pem. Your cert
      will expire on 2025-03-05. To obtain a new or tweaked version of
      this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again. To
      non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run "certbot
      renew"
    - If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
   
      Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
      Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le
   
   Restarting services:
   systemctl reload nginx.service
   

5. Uncomment the ssl related lines in /etc/nginx/sites-available/phpmyadmin.example.org and run

   $ sudo systemctl reload nginx.service
   

Absolute URI

When placed behind a reverse proxy, phpMyAdmin might have trouble generating correct URLs. One manifestation is that after successful login, the URL you are redirected to is broken.

Fixing that is quite easy. Just create file /etc/phpmyadmin/conf.d/absoluteuri.inc.php with the following content:

<?php
$cfg['PmaAbsoluteUri'] = 'https://phpmyadmin.example.org';