Install PhpMyAdmin with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04

Published at: 20/04/2020

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.