Management of MySQL databases can be fairly straightforward—with
the right tools. Using the MySQL command-line client requires a fairly intimate
knowledge of MySQL in particular, and the SQL language in general. Not only that,
but depending on the size of your terminal, the output of large tables can be
quite difficult to read.

A fair number of GUI MySQL clients exist, but perhaps the best
is the Web-based phpMyAdmin tool. This
tool is a PHP-based front end to the MySQL database that can perform
essentially any function to the database you might require. The drawback is
that phpMyAdmin must be installed on
your Web server, so without proper access restrictions, it’s possible that
others could tamper with your SQL data.

Tips in your inbox

Delivered each Tuesday, TechRepublic’s free Linux NetNote provides tips, articles, and other resources to help you hone your Linux skills.

Automatically sign up today!

Installation is extremely easy. Download phpMyAdmin from http://www.phpmyadmin.net/;
the latest version is 2.6.4-pl3. Untar the tarball into a directory of your
choice, such as /srv/www/domain.com/html/admin.
Change into the newly created phpMyAdmin–2.6.4-pl3/
directory. Before connecting phpMyAdmin
to your database, ensure that it is adequately protected. This can be done by
creating an .htaccess file containing:

<code>
AuthUserFile /srv/www/domain.com/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName admin
AuthType basic
 
<Files *>
Order Deny,Allow
Deny From All
Allow From localhost
require user admin
satisfy any
</Files>
</code>

This makes the assumption that /srv/www/domain.com is not actually served, so the .htaccess file is
outside of the Web root (i.e., your DocumentRoot in Apache is /srv/www/domain.com/html). Create the /srv/www/domain.com/.htpasswd file using
the htpasswd tool:

<code>
# htpasswd -cm /srv/www/domain.com/.htpasswd admin
</code>

Once you have provided the admin user a password, edit the config.inc.php file that belongs to phpMyAdmin. You’ll want to edit the $cfg[‘PmabsoluteUri’] keyword to point
to where phpMyAdmin is installed on
your server, then edit the $cfg[‘Servers’]
array. To get up and running quickly, and to be able to edit all the databases
on the server, you’ll need to provide root credentials:

<code>
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host']          = 'localhost';
 
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension']     = 'mysql';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type']     = 'config';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']          = 'root';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']      = 'mysecretrootpass'; 
</code>

Now you should be able to go to http://www.domain.com/admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.4-pl3/ and access your
MySQL data. Rename the directory to phpMyAdmin/
to make it easier to access.