Install PhpMyAdmin with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04

Tags: devops

PhpMyAdmin is the most popular web interface for MySql whereas nginx is becoming a popular choice for web server. Here we will be going thourgh the process of setup a PhpMyAdmin instance with Nginx, in an Ubuntu 18.04 server. The steps may vary slightly for other ubuntu versions.

Setup PhpMyAdmin

• We are assuming php, mysql, nginx are already installed in the Ubuntu system
• Install PhpMyAdmin

  sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
  

• During installation, below screen will appear & ask to choose web server

As we will be using Nginx as web server, don’t select any of the options & enter “Ok”

• In next steps, a new database user for PhpMyAdmin will be created & a database named ‘phpmyadmin’ will be created as well
• After successful installation, phpmyadmin folder can be found at /usr/share/phpmyadmin. We will create a symlink to /var/www/html using following command

  sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/html/phpmyadmin
  

Create Nginx Server Block

• Create a server block file for phpmyadmin at /nginx/sites-available/phpmyadmin & put below content

  server {
        root /var/www/html;
  
        # Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
        index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
  
        server_name ***.**.***.*;
  
        location ~ \.php$ {
           include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
           fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
           fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
           include fastcgi_params;
       }
  }
  

• Test nginx configuration by running sudo nginx -t. If no error found, restart nginx by sudo service restart nginx
• The phpmyadmin web interface will be available at [Your_IP]/phpmyadmin web address

Change name of PhpMyAdmin folder for security

• As automated hacking attack can target the url [IP]/phpmyadmin, it is better practice to use some other name instead of phpmyadmin in the web link.
• To do this, simply change the folder name in /var/www/html by command sudo mv phpmyadmin mydb
• After that the interface will be available at [Your_IP/mydb] web address

Footnote

• There are many more steps regarding setup of Phpmyadmin with mysql & nginx, related to security & best practices. Please follow those as seem fit.