phpMyAdmin ignores 'config.inc.php'

July 22, 2014 21.3k views
1609133877c438ef127b954e276fdbbf3be3e43a
By:
Sinklar

Hi,

I have Ubuntu 14.04 running Nginx, MySQL, PHP5, Ajenti and Ajenti V. I also installed phpMyAdmin and I can access it via <server>/phpmyadmin. But phpMyAdmin seems to ignore the config.inc.php file.

I say that the config file is "ignored" because phpMyAdmin actually works but doesn't load my preferences (and keeps asking about the blowfish_secrect passphrase, for example).

I tried these different approches: created the file from scratch, duplicated and renamed config.inc.sample.php and used the phpMyAdmin setup utility. The result is the same.

The file is present, the permissions seem to be OK (-rw-r--r-- 1 root root) but phpMyAdmin doesn't want to use it. :)

Anybody else ever encountered that?

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10 Answers
Sinklar July 22, 2014

I may have found a solution, it looks like it's related to the website open_basedir setting in Ajenti V.

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  • igorok14 October 12, 2014

    Hello. I do not use Apache. I use a bunch of nginx + php-fpm + mariadb. I
    established myself PhpMyAdmin all set properly and I was able to go
    http://prntscr.com/4v9nwk. But there is one problem that the file is
    /etc/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php completely ignore. I even deleted it but
    continues to work PhpMyAdmin. It is necessary to configure PhpMyAdmin, but
    the system did not see /etc/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php. How to make so that would take into account the settings in the file /etc/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php?

  • artworked November 20, 2014

    I'm having the exact same issue for the last 2 days and it has been doing my heading...

    I have been scanning the internet for hours and I simply cannot find any fix to this.

neuroticimbecile June 14, 2015

Try to edit this file instead: /var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

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bnryzombie June 30, 2015

neuroticimbecile Hit this on the head. Mine was blank so I copied the contents of the sample file over edit my values then whala.

Reply
kaiwanh January 14, 2017

in mycase this help

  1. chmod 644 /etc/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php
  2. chmod 755 /etc/phpMyAdmin/
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kaligularw August 28, 2017

Using phpmyadmin, on Debian Jessie 8, installed thru the official repository with apt-get.
There is a config folder in /etc/phpmyadmin where the config.inc.php is situated.
Editing /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php worked for me.

Reply
artworked October 4, 2015

It has been quiet some time since this post was created but it's always important to keep it up to date so it may help other users.

The reason phpMyAdmin ignores 'config.inc.php' is file ownership. make sure the 'config.inc.php' is owned by the appropriate user (apache or Nginx).

Have fun ;)

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kmchen March 16, 2016

I do go crazy with this. I just can't change preferences on my last local debian phpmyadmin 4.2.12deb2+deb8u1
Tried do change config.inc.php owner, added a die('here') in the file that shows that the file is actualy read. But the simple line 

$cfg['PropertiesIconic'] = TRUE;

won't work !
The preferences must be changed somewhere later

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fabionsarmento December 1, 2016

I'm having the same issue with nginx, the config.inc.php it's completely ignored.

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trumpetMercenary February 28, 2018

how did you install phpMyAdmin? If you do it via yum, then the config.inc.php is taken care of, but if it was manual, then you need to make sure config.inc.php is placed in the top-level directory of phpMyAdmin (e.g. /usr/share/phpMyAdmin). Permissions don't seem to matter, as mine is root:root and still works.

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Nachfolger December 14, 2018

I had to manually install PHPMyAdmin and so that resulted in me having tons of config files everywhere (/usr/share/, /etc/phpmyadmin/, /var/lib/phpmyadmin)

PHPMyAdmin was looking for the config.inc.php file in /usr/share/phpmyadmin/ however, no file was present. Duplicated the config.sample.inc.php from that same directory, renamed it, and it worked like a charm.

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