Install phpMyAdmin on LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP)

What is phpMyAdmin?

phpMyAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP, intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. -https://www.phpmyadmin.net

This tutorial assumes a working Apache2, PHP and MySQL/MariaDB environment is already installed

  1. Log into the Linux machine
  2. Run the following commands in terminal to install phpMyAdmin:
    # update apt repositories
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade
    # download latest phpMyAdmin
    wget https://www.phpmyadmin.net/downloads/phpMyAdmin-latest-english.tar.gz
    # create phpmyadmin directory in web root
    sudo mkdir /var/www/html/phpmyadmin
    # extract the downloaded phpMyAdmin to the folder created
    sudo tar xvf phpMyAdmin-latest-english.tar.gz --strip-components=1 -C /var/www/html/phpmyadmin
    # create a copy of the sample config file
    sudo cp /var/www/html/phpmyadmin/config.sample.inc.php /var/www/html/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
    # set folder owner
    sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/html/phpmyadmin
    # restart apache service
    sudo systemctl restart apache2
    # connect to MySQL and create a user to use with phpMyAdmin
    sudo su
    mysql -u root
    CREATE USER 'i12bretro'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'some_very_complex_password';
    GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON * . * TO 'i12bretro'@'localhost';
    FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
  3. Once the installation completes, open a web browser and navigate to http://DNSorIP/phpmyadmin
  4. Log in using the user created in the steps above
  5. Enjoy visual browser based control over MySQL/MariaDB