Tutorial

How To Install and Secure phpMyAdmin with Nginx on an Ubuntu 14.04 Server

Published on August 6, 2014
How To Install and Secure phpMyAdmin with Nginx on an Ubuntu 14.04 Server
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Ubuntu 14.04

Introduction

Relational database management systems like MySQL are needed for a significant portion of web sites and applications. However, not all users feel comfortable administering their data from the command line.

To solve this problem, a project called phpMyAdmin was created in order to offer an alternative in the form of a web-based management interface. In this guide, we will demonstrate how to install and secure a phpMyAdmin configuration on an Ubuntu 14.04 server. We will build this setup on top of the Nginx web server, which has a good performance profile and can handle heavy loads better than some other web servers.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, there are a few requirements that need to be settled.

To ensure that you have a solid base to build this system upon, you should run through our initial server setup guide for Ubuntu 14.04. Among other things, this will walk you through setting up a non-root user with sudo access for administrative commands.

The second prerequisite that must be fulfilled in order to start on this guide is to install a LEMP (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, and PHP) stack on your Ubuntu 14.04 server. This is the platform that we will use to serve our phpMyAdmin interface (MySQL is also the database management software that we are wishing to manage). If you do not yet have a LEMP installation on your server, follow our tutorial on installing LEMP on Ubuntu 14.04.

When your server is in a properly functioning state after following these guides, you can continue on with the rest of this page.

Step One — Install phpMyAdmin

With our LEMP platform already in place, we can begin right away with installing the phpMyAdmin software. This is available within Ubuntu’s default repositories, so the installation process is simple.

First, update the server’s local package index to make sure it has a fresh set of references to available packages. Then, we can use the apt packaging tools to pull the software down from the repositories and install it on our system:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

During the installation, you will be prompted for some information. It will ask you which web server you would like the software to automatically configure. Since Nginx, the web server we are using, is not one of the available options, you can just hit TAB to bypass this prompt.

The next prompt will ask if you would like dbconfig-common to configure a database for phpmyadmin to use. Select “Yes” to continue.

You will need to enter the database administrative password that you configured during the MySQL installation to allow these changes. Afterward, you will be asked to select and confirm a password for a new database that will hold phpMyAdmin’s own data.

The installation will now complete. For the Nginx web server to find and serve the phpMyAdmin files correctly, we just need to create a symbolic link from the installation files to our Nginx document root directory by typing this:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/html

A final item that we need to address is enabling the mcrypt PHP module, which phpMyAdmin relies on. This was installed with phpMyAdmin so we just need to toggle it on and restart our PHP processor:

sudo php5enmod mcrypt
sudo service php5-fpm restart

With that, our phpMyAdmin installation is now operational. To access the interface, go to your server’s domain name or public IP address followed by /phpmyadmin, in your web browser:

http://server_domain_or_IP/phpmyadmin

phpMyAdmin login screen

To sign in, use a username/password pair of a valid MySQL user. The root user and the MySQL administrative password is a good choice to get started. You will then be able to access the administrative interface:

phpMyAdmin admin interface

Click around to get familiar with the interface. In the next section, we will take steps to secure our new interface.

Step Two — Secure your phpMyAdmin Instance

The phpMyAdmin instance installed on our server should be completely usable at this point. However, by installing a web interface, we have exposed our MySQL system to the outside world.

Even with the included authentication screen, this is quite a problem. Because of phpMyAdmin’s popularity combined with the large amount of data it provides access to, installations like these are common targets for attackers.

We will implement two simple strategies to lessen the chances of our installation being targeted and compromised. We will change the location of the interface from /phpmyadmin to something else to sidestep some of the automated bot brute-force attempts. We will also create an additional, web server-level authentication gateway that must be passed before even getting to the phpMyAdmin login screen.

Changing the Application’s Access Location

In order for our Nginx web server to find and serve our phpMyAdmin files, we created a symbolic link from the phpMyAdmin directory to our document root in an earlier step.

To change the URL where our phpMyAdmin interface can be accessed, we simply need to rename the symbolic link. Move into the Nginx document root directory to get a better idea of what we are doing:

cd /usr/share/nginx/html
ls -l
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 537 Mar  4 06:46 50x.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 612 Mar  4 06:46 index.html
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  21 Aug  6 10:50 phpmyadmin -> /usr/share/phpmyadmin

As you can see, we have a symbolic link called phpmyadmin in this directory. We can change this link name to whatever we would like. This will change the location where phpMyAdmin can be accessed from a browser, which can help obscure the access point from hard-coded bots.

Choose a name that does not indicate the purpose of the location. In this guide, we will name our access location /nothingtosee. To accomplish this, we will just rename the link:

sudo mv phpmyadmin nothingtosee
ls -l
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 537 Mar  4 06:46 50x.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 612 Mar  4 06:46 index.html
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  21 Aug  6 10:50 nothingtosee -> /usr/share/phpmyadmin

Now, if you go to the previous location of your phpMyAdmin installation, you will get a 404 error:

http://server_domain_or_IP/phpmyadmin

phpMyAdmin 404 error

However, your phpMyAdmin interface will be available at the new location we selected:

http://server_domain_or_IP/nothingtosee

phpMyAdmin login screen

Setting up a Web Server Authentication Gate

The next feature we wanted for our installation was an authentication prompt that a user would be required to pass before ever seeing the phpMyAdmin login screen.

Fortunately, most web servers, including Nginx, provide this capability natively. We will just need to modify our Nginx configuration file with the details.

Before we do this, we will create a password file that will store our the authentication credentials. Nginx requires that passwords be encrypted using the crypt() function. The OpenSSL suite, which should already be installed on your server, includes this functionality.

To create an encrypted password, type:

openssl passwd

You will be prompted to enter and confirm the password that you wish to use. The utility will then display an encrypted version of the password that will look something like this:

O5az.RSPzd.HE

Copy this value, as you will need to paste it into the authentication file we will be creating.

Now, create an authentication file. We will call this file pma_pass and place it in the Nginx configuration directory:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/pma_pass

Within this file, you simply need to specify the username you would like to use, followed by a colon (:), followed by the encrypted version of your password you received from the openssl passwd utility.

We are going to name our user demo, but you should choose a different username. The file for this guide looks like this:

demo:O5az.RSPzd.HE

Save and close the file when you are finished.

Now, we are ready to modify our Nginx configuration file. Open this file in your text editor to get started:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Within this file, we need to add a new location section. This will target the location we chose for our phpMyAdmin interface (we selected /nothingtosee in this guide).

Create this section within the server block, but outside of any other blocks. We will put our new location block below the location / block in our example:

server {
    . . .

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location /nothingtosee {
    }

    . . .
}

Within this block, we need to set the value of a directive called auth_basic to an authentication message that our prompt will display to users. We do not want to indicate to unauthenticated users what we are protecting, so do not give specific details. We will just use “Admin Login” in our example.

We then need to use a directive called auth_basic_user_file to point our web server to the authentication file that we created. Nginx will prompt the user for authentication details and check that the inputted values match what it finds in the specified file.

After we are finished, the file should look like this:

server {
    . . .

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location /nothingtosee {
        auth_basic "Admin Login";
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/pma_pass;
    }

    . . .
}

Save and close the file when you are finished.

To implement our new authentication gate, we must restart the web server:

sudo service nginx restart

Now, if we visit our phpMyAdmin location in our web browser (you may have to clear your cache or use a different browser session if you have already been using phpMyAdmin), you should be prompted for the username and password you added to the pma_pass file:

http://server_domain_or_IP/nothingtosee

Nginx authentication page

Once you enter your credentials, you will be taken to the normal phpMyAdmin login page. This added layer of protection will help keep your MySQL logs clean of authentication attempts in addition to the added security benefit.

Conclusion

You can now manage your MySQL databases from a reasonably secure web interface. This UI exposes most of the functionality that is available from the MySQL command prompt. You can view databases and schema, execute queries, and create new data sets and structures.

Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings for compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.

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Justin Ellingwood
Justin Ellingwood
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You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

You could also use MySQL Workbench (I have used it for a year +), it can be setup to use a ssh tunnel so you don’t need to expose your server to a phpmyadmin and the need for an ssl cert.

Another option (for OSX users) would be: http://www.sequelpro.com/

You can setup a SSL connection and connect to MySQL using socket or localhost. If it’s your own droplet and only you (and/or some colleagues) have to access MySQL, I’d prefer Sequel Pro.

When you need phpMyAdmin? Please use this tutorial to make the internet a safer place ;)

I followed this tutorial and configured phpmyadmin successfully. Then I followed the following article to add a second domain to my Droplet by creating a virtual host ready for two separate Wordpress installs.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-single-and-multiple-wordpress-site-settings-with-nginx

After I configured the server blocks to create a virtual server to host multiple sites on the server. I lost access to phpmyadmin via the url (ie. domain.com/nothingtosee). Now all that it returns is a 404 error.

Is there a quick fix to this?

You have to create a symlink to phpMyAdmin from the root of your virtualhost.

So in your html dir you do: sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin phpmyadmin

Now you can access phpmyadmin at example.com/phpmyadmin

Hi, how come after I typed sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin the first question it asked was whether I wanted it to be installed in Apache2 or Lighttd? I’m in Nginx(LEMP) and it’s not even an option for an answer. So I reluctantly selected Apache2. Would that be a problem? Should I uninstall it and start over? If it needs to be uninstalled, how to do that properly? Thanks!

Justin Ellingwood
DigitalOcean Employee
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September 7, 2014

If you read the explanations in between the text, you will see that you can press Tab to bypass that prompt. The phpmyadmin package knows how to do some things automatically for those two Web servers that we do manually in this guide. I don’t believe that it will be much of a problem if you accidentally choose one of those options, but I could be wrong.

Thank you! It works now by pressing Tab to bypass it. Staying up too late for coding can do funny things to your focus :P

Hi, your tutorial was great. I did have a problem. After accessing phpmyadmin (with htaccess password ), the next time I connected I didn’t get prompted for a password. I didn’t save the password in the browser (chrome and firefox) and I didn’t save cookies (cleared on close). Not sure where it is being saved.

I wanted to try a little more security rather than password protecting access to PhpMyadmin.

I wanted to secure it so that I could only access it from either localhost or my local private network 192.168.100.0.

I made the following changes:

  • I undid AllowOverride All
  • renamed .htaccess so the password mechanism stopped
  • I added Require all denied Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 Allow from localhost
  • actually I tried localhost first the i tried both

Now nobody can access phpmyadmin???

Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin

<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin> Options FollowSymLinks DirectoryIndex index.php

BT Sept 6,2014

AllowOverride All

    <IfModule mod_php5.c>
            AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
            php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off
            php_flag track_vars On
            php_flag register_globals Off
            php_admin_flag allow_url_fopen Off
            php_value include_path .
            php_admin_value upload_tmp_dir /var/lib/phpmyadmin/tmp
            php_admin_value open_basedir /usr/share/phpmyadmin/:/etc/phpmyadmin/:/var/lib/phpmyadmin/:/usr/share/php/php-gettext/:/usr/share/javascript/
    </IfModule>

BT trying to block PhpMyadmin from Internet

    Require all denied
    Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
    Allow from localhost

</Directory>

Authorize for setup

<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin/setup> <IfModule mod_authn_file.c> AuthType Basic AuthName “phpMyAdmin Setup” AuthUserFile /etc/phpmyadmin/htpasswd.setup </IfModule> Require valid-user </Directory>

Disallow web access to directories that don’t need it

<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin/libraries> Order Deny,Allow Deny from All </Directory> <Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin/setup/lib> Order Deny,Allow Deny from All </Directory>

Can you see what’s wrong? thanks

In the above code example:

    location / {
        try_file $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

should be:

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

Note the highlighted ‘s’, else NginX could not apply your changes and your server block will cause a parse error.

Kamal Nasser
DigitalOcean Employee
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October 12, 2014

Nice catch, @averysphere! I’ve corrected it. Thanks :)

Hi, Thank you for an excellent tutorial.

Could you please tell us what the right permission should be for the phpmyadmin symbolic link folder in the document root? [ :/ Eh, assuming that’s what it’s called. ]

The current permission for the same folder on my server is 777, should I be changing it to 755?

Thanks and Regards.

I’d like to know, too this since my phpmyadmin folder is also 777. Isn’t this unsecured?

sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/html

From apt Nginx we can installed 1.2.1 version, so the html should be changed to www, like this line:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/www

only in later version(1.4) the path contains /html

PS: all html lines should be replaced by www

Hi, how to force SSL / HTTPS when you access http://server_domain_or_ip/nothingtosee (the phpmyadmin folder) ?

I’d rather not access phpmyadmin in http mode. Https is more secured

Andrew SB
DigitalOcean Employee
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October 22, 2014

Check out this article for all the info on setting up SSL on Nginx: How To Create an SSL Certificate on Nginx for Ubuntu 14.04

Once you have basic SSL support working, you can force HTTPS for phpMyAdmin by adding something like the following you your Nginx server block:

    location /nothingtosee {
        rewrite ^ https://$http_host$request_uri? permanent;
    }

I’m new to Nginx so I’m probably missing something obvious but Andrew’s example returns the following message in Chrome when I try to access that folder.

This webpage has a redirect loop

(edit)

I’m not sure if it’s correct but the following worked for me:

    location /nothingtosee {
        if ($scheme = 'http') {
            rewrite ^ https://$http_host$request_uri? permanent;
        }
    }

Thanks for this awesome post … could not get into securing my phpadmin installation as I get stuck with a 403 Forbidden error after trying to reach it …;

I set the link as stated :

sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/html # I’m using the /var directory…

then upon request to http://www.mydomain.net/phpmyadmin

I get a 403 Forbidden result…

in the log I can see : 2014/11/01 15:55:23 [error] 13195#0: *3 directory index of “/var/www/html/phpmyadmin/” is forbidden, client: XX.XX.XXX.XX, server: _, request: “GET /phpmyadmin”

php-fpm is running fine as I can get http://www.mydomain.net/info.php with the info.php file added into /var/www/html

HOWEVER if I request http://www.mydomain.net/phpmyadmin/index.php then I get the login panel…

what am I missing

I cannot get to the phpmyadmin program after following all of these steps. Here’s what I did:

  1. I created a new Droplet using the “Drupal 7.32 on Ubuntu 14.04” application image.
  2. I followed the steps on how to setup the initial server using the tutorial at Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 14.04.
  3. I followed the steps above in the article on this page.

When I go to http://server_domain_or_IP/phpmyadmin I get a 404 error.

I wonder…in the example above, the public-facing directory is at /var/www/html but with the Drupal image the public-facing directory is at /var/www/html/drupal. I tried modifying the symlink command to this:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/html/drupal

but it didn’t help. Any ideas?

Kamal Nasser
DigitalOcean Employee
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November 5, 2014

Are there any errors in nginx’s error log?

sudo tail -30 /var/log/nginx/error.log

Does /usr/share/nginx/html/drupal/wordpress exist? What’s the output of:

sudo ls -lah /usr/share/nginx/html/drupal

Hi kamain7 and thanks for responding. I checked the things you asked about, here are the results:

The nginx error.log is empty.

The directory /usr/share/nginx/html/drupal/wordpress does not exist.

The result of sudo ls -lah /usr/share/nginx/html/drupal is:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Nov 5 11:14 /usr/share/nginx/html/drupal -> /usr/share/phpmyadmin

You didn’t ask but the result of sudo ls -lah /usr/share/nginx/html is:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Nov 5 11:14 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Oct 15 17:12 … -rw-r–r-- 1 root root 537 Mar 4 2014 50x.html lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Nov 5 11:14 drupal -> /usr/share/phpmyadmin -rw-r–r-- 1 root root 612 Mar 4 2014 index.html lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Nov 3 20:59 phpmyadmin -> /usr/share/phpmyadmin

Kamal Nasser
DigitalOcean Employee
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November 6, 2014

The 1-click Drupal image installs Drupal in /var/www/html/drupal. Try creating the symlink in that directory:

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

Hi kamain7,

I created a fresh droplet again, followed all the steps described above but this time I used the ln command you suggested: sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/html/drupal/phpmyadmin but it did not work.

If I set the browser to either http://ip_address/phpmyadmin or http://domain_name.com/phpmyadmin it returns the standard nginx “An error occurred…blah blah blah…Faithfully yours, nginx” page.

If I add the www and set the browser to http://www.domain_name.com/phpmyadmin it returns a HTTP 404 error.

Thanks for trying to help but I’m still stuck. Any other ideas?

Sorry to keep asking but does any one have any ideas on how to access phpMyAdmin or any thoughts on why I can’t? I’m still stuck. Thanks.

I have same problem too.

Same issue. Don’t create a symlink in your root directory at all, it’s a bad way to do it. Delete those symlinks (go into the folder and rm them), and then do this:

  1. Go to /etc/nginx/sites-available
  2. Create a new entry for phpmyadmin - touch phpmyadmin
  3. Symlink this to the sites-enabled folder - ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/phpmyadmin /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/phpmyadmin
  4. Edit this file - sudo vi phpmyadmin - enter the following (change the port?):

server { listen 30303; server_name localhost; root /usr/share/phpmyadmin; index index.php index.html index.htm; if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^/(.+)$ /index.php?url=$1 last; break; } location ~ .php$ { try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; } }

Access phpmyadmin via: whatever.com:30303. Better, safer.

Here is a solution that you can try.

Nginx wont start after adding the configuration files

# HTTPS server

server {
	listen 443;
	server_name localhost;

	root html;
	index index.html index.htm;

	ssl on;
	ssl_certificate cert.pem;
	ssl_certificate_key cert.key;

	ssl_session_timeout 5m;

	ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
	ssl_ciphers "HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5 or HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5:!3DES";
	ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

	location / {
		try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
	}


	location /sql {
        auth_basic "Admin Login";
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/pma_pass;
    }

}

here am stuck: cd /usr/share/nginx/html ls -l

total 8 -rw-r–r-- 1 root root 537 Mar 4 06:46 50x.html -rw-r–r-- 1 root root 612 Mar 4 06:46 index.html lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Aug 6 10:50 phpmyadmin -> /usr/share/phpmyadmin

i don’t have a phpmyadmin, just a phpmyadmin.css.php, and when i try on mydomain.com/phpmyadmin nothing hapened, my site apare on this adress too. Help pls.

What if you cd into /ust/share/phpmyadmin? Cane you see if there’s all the files? Maybe the symbolic link is wrong and you should create it again. I’ve tried placing the whole path in the ln command.

ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/phpmyadmin

Now i am getting

403 Forbidden

nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu)

2015/01/04 18:23:23 [error] 898#0: *81 directory index of "/usr/share/nginx/html/phpmyadmin/" is forbidden, client: 41.206.11.106, server: localhost, request: "GET /phpmyadmin/ HTTP/1.1", host: "104.236.17.34"
2015/01/04 18:42:47 [error] 898#0: *90 directory index of "/usr/share/nginx/html/phpmyadmin/" is forbidden, client: 41.206.11.106, server: localhost, request: "GET /phpmyadmin/ HTTP/1.1", host: "104.236.17.34"
2015/01/04 18:54:53 [error] 900#0: *6 directory index of "/usr/share/nginx/html/phpmyadmin/" is forbidden, client: 41.206.11.106, server: localhost, request: "GET /phpmyadmin/ HTTP/1.1", host: "104.236.17.34"
Kamal Nasser
DigitalOcean Employee
DigitalOcean Employee badge
January 4, 2015

Replace

index index.html index.htm;

with

index index.php index.html index.htm;

and restart nginx.

Done but now when i go to my ip/phpmyadmin it downloads a file to my system

any idea how i can export my database from old server then import in new server? the tutorials i found are not easy to understand

Uncomment php in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;

        #       # With php5-cgi alone:
        #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        #       # With php5-fpm:
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        }

This comment has been deleted

    Please what if i want phpmyadmin to be in the root of one of my site? how do i set the configuration?

    Good day, Thank you for the good work. Please can i install this phpMyAdmin with Nginx on an Ubuntu 14.04 Server on Windows 7 OS with the above steps. I will appreciate your feedback

    i installed phpmyadmin with nginx but when i go to http://95.85.39.84/phpmyadmin i still can see just my index.html from http://qbfweb.com/.

    Having the same problem. How to solve?

    Why is it that when I do apt-get install phpmyadmin it also wants to install a bunch of other things like apache? I don’t want apache, I use nginx. Can I make it just download what is required somehow?

    After I made a symbolic link:

    sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/html
    

    I am trying to acces my phpmyadmin interface through http://my.ip.address.com/phpmyadmin But the only thing I get is a 404 not found page: http://prntscr.com/6e20xe

    What now? Do I need to make a seperate conf file for this extension?

    Thanks in advance!

    For me I used this command

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

    instead of

    sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/html
    

    Im need add this lines to complete installation.

    1. Add the following lines:
          root /usr/share/; 
          index index.php index.html index.htm; 
        location ~ ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.php)$ { 
          try_files $uri =404; 
          root /usr/share/; 
          fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; 
          fastcgi_index index.php; 
          fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; 
          include fastcgi_params; 
        } 
        location ~* ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt))$ { 
          root /usr/share/; 
        } 
        } 
        location /phpMyAdmin { 
          rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last; 
        }```  
    
    5. Save and exit  
    
    6. sudo service nginx restart

    Hi Justin, I followed this tutorial and everything worked just fine but the i followed your other tutorial about installing wordpress and now for some reason that has totally flumuxed me i am no long able to access phpmyadmin.

    Hope you can help

    I followed the instructions, and after installing phpmyadmin, I went to myserverip/phpmyadmin and nothing happens, it just showing the index of the only website that I have installed in my server.

    That’s the same for me. it’s driving me 😜

    I found a way to make it work but not sure if it’s the correct way.

    I reran

    sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /usr/share/nginx/html but switch the end to sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/html

    then "cd /var/www/html and ran sudo mv phpmyadmin nothingtosee

    that allowed me to then see phpmyadmin

    Hope this helps

    I installed successfully phpmyadmin and yesterday was working. Today I woke up, tried to get access and I’m just getting a 404 not found.

    In my server blocks, I already 2 blocks, one named default, and another one which is the one of my WP site.

    The default block has this lines: Any ideas?

    server {
            listen 80 default_server;
            listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
    
            root /var/www/html;
            index index.php index.html index.htm;
    
            # Make site accessible from http://localhost/
            server_name myIP;
    
            location / {
                    # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                    # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
                    # try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
                    # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
                    # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules
                    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
            }
     location /nothingtosee {
    auth_basic "Admin Login";
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/pma_pass;
       }
    
            error_page 404 /404.html;
            error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
                    root /usr/share/nginx/html;
            }
    
            location ~ \.php$ {
                    try_files $uri =404;
                    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
                    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                    fastcgi_index index.php;
                    include fastcgi_params;
            }
    
    

    That look about right, did you create the link using sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/html because when you installed wordpress using the tutorial you changed the root to /var/www/html/

    So try to create it to that folder and then cd /var/www/html and run sudo mv phpmyadmin nothingtosee

    This worked for me after installing wordpress.

    What can you see when you goto cd /var/www/html
    and ls -l

    Works perfect on my droplet thanks.

    It didnt’ work for me. Actually I don’t understand, because yes, I changed the root to /var/www/html/ but that path is where I only have my websites, and /usr/share/phpmyadmin is where phpmyadmin is…Anyway, I did what you said:

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

    And after that I did

    sudo mv phpmyadmin nothingtosee
    

    But when I go to http://myip/nothingtosee it shows a 404 not found

    Glad it helped.

    Lbones, when I do cd /var/www/html and ls -l, this is what I got.

    serveruser@LEMP:/var/www/html$ ls -l total 4 drwxr-xr-x 4 www-data www-data 4096 Apr 8 03:09 webs

    Got a 403, did a google, added this to my /etc/nginx/sites-available/default file:

    location /phpmyadmin {
           index index.php;
        }
    

    restarted nginx:

    sudo service nginx restart
    

    Calm restored

    Hi, thank you for this tutorial. I have a problem when going to http://mydomain.com/phpmyadmin, for some reason it downloads a file named download, which as some php code inside. Anybody could help me with this?

    working for my remote database server

    On my HHVM server it installs apache2

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