phpMyAdmin 2.2.1-dev Documentation


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Requirements


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Introduction

phpMyAdmin can administer a whole MySQL-server (needs a super-user) but also a single database. To accomplish the latter you'll need a properly set up MySQL-user who can read/write only the desired database. It's up to you to look up the appropiate part in the MySQL manual. Currently phpMyAdmin can:

(*)  phpMyAdmin can compress (GZip format -RFC 1952- or Bzip2) dumps and CSV exports if you use PHP4 >= 4.0.4 with Zlib support (--with-zlib) and/or Bzip2 support (--with-bz2).

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Installation

Quick Install:

  1. Untar or unzip the distribution (be sure to unzip the subdirectories): tar xzvf phpMyAdmin_x.x.x.tar.gz
  2. Open the file config.inc.php3 in your favourite editor and change the values for host, user and password to fit your environment. Have a look at Documentation.html for an explanation of all values.
  3. It is recommended that you protect the directory in which you installed phpMyAdmin (unless it's on a closed intranet), for example with HTTP-AUTH (in a .htaccess file). See the FAQ section for additional information.
  4. Open the file <www.your-host.com>/<your-install-dir>/index.php3 in your browser. phpMyAdmin should now display a welcome screen and your databases, or a login dialog if using advanced authentication.

Upgrading from an older version:


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Configuration

All configurable data is placed in config.inc.php3.

$cfgPmaAbsoluteUri string
Sets here the complete url (with full path) to your phpMyAdmin version. E.g. http://www.your_web.net/path_to_your_phpMyAdmin_directory/.
Don't forget the slash at the end of your url.

$cfgServers array
Since version 1.4.2, phpMyAdmin supports the administration of multiple MySQL servers. Therefore, a $cfgServers-array has been added which contains the login information for the different servers. $cfgServers[1]['host'] contains the hostname of the first server, $cfgServers[2]['host'] the hostname of the second server, etc. If you have only one server to administer, simply leave free the hostname of the other $cfgServer-entries.

$cfgServers[n]['host'] string
The hostname of your n-th MySQL-server. E.g. localhost.

$cfgServers[n]['port'] string
The port-number of your n-th MySQL-server. Default is 3306 (leave blank).

$cfgServers[n]['socket'] string
The path to the socket to use. Leave blank for default.

$cfgServers[n]['connect_type'] string
What type connection to use with the MySQL server. Your options are 'socket' & 'tcp'. It defaults to 'tcp' as that is nearly guarenteed to be available on all MySQL servers, while sockets are not supported on some platforms.

$cfgServers[n]['adv_auth'] boolean
Whether basic or advanced authentication should be used for this server.
Basic authentication ($adv_auth = false) is the plain old way: username and password are stored in config.inc.php3. Advanced authentication ($adv_auth = true) as introduced in 1.3.0 allows you to log in as any valid MySQL user via HTTP-Auth.
Please note that this authentication mode is only supported with PHP running as an Apache module, and not with cgi.

Using advanced authentication is recommended: Advanced authentication is secure as the standard user needs just read-only-access to the mysql database.

All you have to provide in config.inc is a standard user which can connect to MySQL and read the mysql user/db table (see $cfgServers[n]['stduser']).

Please also note that if you try a phpMyAdmin login with this stduser, you could get some errors, depending on the exact privileges you gave to this stduser. phpMyAdmin does not support a direct login with the the stduser.

See also the FAQ section for more information about security.

$cfgServers[n]['stduser'] string
$cfgServers[n]['stdpass'] string
A user/password pair used to verify the real user/password pair when using advanced authentication. This user must be able to connect to MySQL and read the mysql user table.
Not needed when using basic authentication.

$cfgServers[n]['user'] string
$cfgServers[n]['password'] string
The user/password-pair which phpMyAdmin will use to connect to this MySQL-server when using basic authentication.
Not needed when using advanced authentication.

$cfgServers[n]['only_db'] string or array
If set to a(an array of) database name(s), only this(these) database(s) will be shown to the user.

$cfgServers[n]['verbose'] string
Only useful when using phpMyAdmin with multiple server entries. If set, this string will be displayed instead of the hostname in the pulldown menu on the main page. This can be useful if you want to show only certain databases on your system, for example.

$cfgServers[n]['bookmarkdb'] string
$cfgServers[n]['bookmarktable'] string
Since release 2.2.0 phpMyAdmin allows to bookmark queries. This can be useful for queries you often run.

To use this functionality you have to:
If you are using advanced authentication, stduser must have Select_Priv, Insert_Priv and Delete_Priv set to "Y" in mysql.db table for the bookmark database.

$cfgServerDefault integer
If you have more than one server configured, you can set $cfgServerDefault to any one of them to autoconnect to that server when phpMyAdmin is started, or set it to 0 to be given a list of servers without logging in.
If you have only one server configured, $cfgServerDefault MUST be set to that server.

$cfgOBGzip boolean
Defines whether to use gzip output buffering for increased speed in HTTP transfers.

$cfgPersistentConnections boolean
Whether persistent connections should be used or not (mysql_connect or mysql_pconnect).

$cfgSkipLockedTables boolean
Mark used tables and make it possible to show databases with locked tables (since 3.23.30).

$cfgShowSQL boolean
Defines whether sql-queries generated by phpMyAdmin should be displayed or not.

$cfgAllowUserDropDatabase boolean
Defines whether standard users (non administrator) are allowed to delete their own database or not. If set as FALSE, the link "Drop Database" will not be shown, and even a "DROP DATABASE mydatabase" will be rejected. Quite practical for ISP's with many customers.

$cfgConfirm boolean
Whether a warning ("Are your really sure..") should be displayed when you're about to loose data.

$cfgShowStats boolean
Defines whether to display space usage and statistics about databases and tables or not.

$cfgShowBlob boolean
Defines whether BLOB fields are shown when browsing a table's content or not.

$cfgShowAll boolean
Defines whether an user should be displayed a "show all (records)" button in browse mode or not.

$cfgMaxRows integer
Number of rows displayed when browsing a resultset. If the resultset contains more rows, Previous/Next links will be shown.

$cfgOrder string [DESC|ASC|SMART]
Defines whether fields are displayed in ascending (ASC) order, in descending (DESC) order or in a "smart" (SMART) order -ie descending order for fields of type TIME, DATE, DATETIME & TIMESTAMP, ascending order else- by default.

$cfgProtectBinary boolean
Defines whether BLOB or BINARY fields are protected from edition when browsing a table's content or not. Valid values are:
- FALSE to allow edition of all fields;
- blob to allow edition of all fields except BLOBS;
- all to disallow edition of all BINARY or BLOB fields.

$cfgZipDump boolean
$cfgGZipDump boolean
$cfgBZipDump boolean
Defines whether to allow the use of zip/gzip/bzip compression when creating a dump file or not.

$cfgManualBase string
If set to an URL which points to the MySQL documentation, appropriate help links are generated.

$cfgDefaultLang string
Defines the default language to use, if not browser-defined or user-defined.
See the select_lang.inc.php3 script to know the valid values for this setting.

$cfgLang string
Force: always use this language (must be defined in the select_lang.inc.php3 script).

$cfgBorder integer
The size of a table's border.

$cfgThBgcolor string [HTML color]
The color (HTML) used for table headers.

$cfgBgcolorOne string [HTML color]
The color (HTML) #1 for table rows.

$cfgBgcolorTwo string [HTML color]
The color (HTML) #2 for table rows.

$cfgTextareaCols integer
$cfgTextareaRows integer
Number of columns and rows for the textareas.

$cfgLimitChars integer
Maximal number of Chars showed in a TEXT OR a BLOB field on browse view. Can be turned off by a toggle button on the browse page.

$cfgModifyDeleteAtLeft boolean
$cfgModifyDeleteAtRight boolean
Defines the place where modify and delete links would be put when tables contents are displayed (you may have them displayed both at the left and at the right).

$cfgLeftWidth integer
Left frame width in pixel.

$cfgColumnTypes array
All possible types of a MySQL column. In most cases you don't need to edit this.

$cfgAttributeTypes array
Possible attributes for fields. In most cases you don't need to edit this.
$cfgFunctions array
A list of functions MySQL supports. In most cases you don't need to edit this.


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FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

I'm running php 4+ and my server is crashing each time a specific action is required or phpMyAdmin send a blank page to my browser, what can I do?
There is some known php bugs with output buffering and compression.
Try to set the $cfgOBGzip directive to FALSE in your config.inc.php or .php3 file and the zlib.output_compression directive to Off in your php configuration file.

The error message "Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by ..." is displayed, what's the problem?
Edit your config.inc.php or .php3 file and ensure there is nothing (ie no blank lines, no spaces, no characters...) neither before the <?php tag at the beginning, neither after the ?> tag at the end.

I can't insert new rows into a table - MySQL brings up a SQL-error.
Examine the SQL error with care. I've found that many programmers specifying a wrong field-type.
Common errors include:

Also, look at the syntax chapter in the MySQL manual to confirm that your syntax is correct.

phpMyAdmin can't connect to MySQL. What's wrong?
Either there is an error with your PHP setup or your username/password is wrong. Try to make a small script which uses mysql_connect and see if it works. If it doesn't, it may be you haven't even compiled MySQL support into PHP.

The error message "Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (111)...") is displayed. What can I do?
Here is a fix suggested by Brad Ummer in the phpwizard forum:

phpMyAdmin always gives "Access denied" when using advanced authentication.
This could happen for some reasons:

When using advanced authentication, an user who logged out can not relogs in with the same nick.
This is related to the authentication mechanism (protocol) used by phpMyAdmin. We plan to change it as soon as we may find enough free time to do it, but you can bypass this problem: just close all the opened browser windows and then go back to phpMyAdmin. You should be able to logs in again.

I would like to help out with the development of phpMyAdmin. How should I proceed?
The following method is preferred for new developers:

Write access to the CVS tree is granted only to experienced developers who have already contributed something useful to phpMyAdmin.
Also, have a look at the Developers section.

What's the preferred way of making phpMyAdmin secure against evil access?
This depends on your system.
If you're running a server which cannot be accessed by other people, it's sufficient to use the directory protection bundled with your webserver (with Apache you can use .htaccess files, for example).
If other people have telnet access to your server, you should use phpMyAdmin's advanced authentication feature.

Suggestions:

How can I insert a null value into my table?
Enter "null", without the quotes, as the field's value. This is especially useful for Timestamp or AutoIncrement fields.

I'm an ISP. Can I setup one central copy of phpMyAdmin or do I need to install it for each customer?
Since version 2.0.3, you can setup a central copy of phpMyAdmin for all your users. The development of this feature was kindly sponsored by NetCologne GmbH.
This requires a properly setup MySQL user management and phpMyAdmin's advanced authentication. phpMyAdmin performs these steps, when authenticating a user:

  1. Select all entries from the mysql.user table where the username/password matches the challenging user. If no rows are returned, the authentication has failed. Otherwise, phpMyAdmin continues with step 2.
  2. If the user's global Select_Priv is "N" (ie the user is not allowed to access all databases), phpMyAdmin searches the mysql.db table for entries with Select_Priv = "Y" belonging to the user. If no entries are found, the authentication has failed. Otherwise, phpMyAdmin shows all databases the user is allowed to view.
    If the user's global Select_Priv is "Y", all databases in the system are shown.

This means that you need to add a user to the mysql database as following:
INSERT INTO user (Host, User, Password, Select_priv, Insert_priv, Update_priv, Delete_priv, Create_priv, Drop_priv, Reload_priv, Shutdown_priv, Process_priv, File_priv, Grant_priv, References_priv, Index_priv, Alter_priv) VALUES ('localhost', 'foo', PASSWORD('bar'), 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N', 'N')
INSERT INTO db (Host, Db, User, Select_priv, Insert_priv, Update_priv, Delete_priv, Create_priv, Drop_priv, Grant_priv, References_priv, Index_priv, Alter_priv) VALUES ('localhost', 'foo_db', 'foo', 'Y', 'Y', 'Y', 'Y', 'Y', 'Y', '', '', '', '')
Then only the "foo_db" database will be displayed to user "foo".

How can I GZip or Bzip a dump or a CSV export. It seem to not work?
These features are based on the gzencode() and bzcompress() php functions to be more independent of the platform (Unix/Windows, Safe Mode or not, and so on). So, you must have PHP4 >= 4.0.4 and Zlib/Bzip2 support (--with-zlib and --with-bz2).

I try to insert a text file in a table, and I get:
Error MySQL said: The file '/tmp/phpkvpp60' must be in the database directory or be readable by all
Your uploaded file is saved by PHP in the "upload dir", as defined in php.ini by the variable upload_tmp_dir (usually the system default is /tmp). If this directory is not readable by all, the MySQL server (which must be running on the same machine) cannot open the file (except if running as root, which is not recommended).
The system administrator can do a "chmod 777 /tmp": then the MySQL server will accept to read it. Also, the user must have File privilege.

I'm having troubles when uploading files. In general file uploads don't work on my system and uploaded files have a Content-Type: header in the first line.
It's not really phpMyAdmin related but RedHat 7.0. You have a RedHat 7.0 and you updated your php rpm to php-4.0.4pl1-3.i386.rpm, didn't you?
So the problem is that this package has a serious bug that was corrected ages ago in php (2001-01-28: see php's bug tracking system for more details). The problem is that the bugged package is still available though it was corrected (see redhat's bugzilla for more details).
So please download the fixed package and the problem should go away.
And that fixes the \r\n problem with file uploads!

When I create a table, I click the Index checkbox for 2 fields and phpMyAdmin generates only one index with those 2 fields.
In phpMyAdmin 2.2.0, this is the way to create a multi-fields index. If you want two indexes, create the first one when creating the table, save, then display the table properties and click the Index link to create the other index.

I get an out of memory error, and my controls are non-functional, when trying to create a table with more than 14 fields.
We could reproduce this problem only under Win98/98SE. Testing under WinNT4 or Win2K, we could easily create more than 60 fields.
A workaround is to create a smaller number of fields, then come back to your table properties and add the other fields.

I get errors about not being able to include a file in /lang
Check php.ini, or ask your sysadmin to check it. The include_path must contain "." somewhere in it, and open_basedir, if used, must contain "." and "./lang" to allow normal operation of phpMyAdmin.

I have found a bug. How do I inform developpers?
Our Bug Tracker is located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin/ under the Bugs section.

But please first discuss your bug with other users:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin/ (and choose Forums)
http://www.phpwizard.net/projects/phpMyAdmin/ (and choose Support Forum)


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Developers Information

phpMyAdmin is Open Source, so you're invited to contribute to it. Many great features have been written by other people and you too can help to make phpMyAdmin a useful tool.

If you're planning to contribute source, please read the following information:

IMPORTANT: With 1.4.1, development has switched to CVS. The following method is preferred for new developers:

Write access to the CVS tree is granted only to developers who have already contributed something useful to phpMyAdmin. If you're interested in that, please contact us using the phpmyadmin-devel mailing list.


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Credits


phpMyAdmin - Credits
====================

CREDITS, in chronological order
-------------------------------

[tr] - Tobias Ratschiller <tobias_at_phpwizard.net>
	* creator of the phpmyadmin project
	* maintainer from 1998 to summer 2000

[md] - Marc Delisle <DelislMa_at_CollegeSherbrooke.qc.ca>
	* multi-language version
	* various fixes and improvements

[om] - Olivier Müller <om_at_omnis.ch>
	* started SourceForge phpMyAdmin project in March 2001
	* sync'ed different existing CVS trees with new features and bugfixes
	* multi-language improvements, dynamic language selection
	* current project maintainer, with Marc and Loic

[lc] - Loïc Chapeaux <lolo_at_phpheaven.net>
	* rewrote and optimized javascript, DHTML and DOM stuff
	* started to rewrite the scripts so they fit the PEAR coding standards
	  and generate XHTML1.0 and CSS2 compliant codes
	* improved the language detection system
	* many bugfixes and improvements

[rj] - Robin Johnson <robbat2_at_users.sourceforge.net>
	* database maintence controls
	* table type code

[af] - Armel Fauveau <armel.fauveau_at_globalis-ms.com>
	* bookmarks feature
	* multiple dump feature
	* gzip dump feature
	* zip dump feature

[gl] - Geert Lund <glund_at_silversoft.dk>
	* various fixes
	* moderator of the phpMyAdmin users forum at phpwizard.net

[kc] - Korakot Chaovavanich <korakot_at_iname.com>
	* "insert as new row" feature

[pk] - Pete Kelly <webmaster_at_trafficg.com>
	* rewrote and fix dump code
	* bugfixes

[sa] - Steve Alberty <alberty_at_neptunlabs.de>
	* rewrote dump code for PHP4
	* mySQL table statistics
	* bugfixes

[bg] - Benjamin Gandon <gandon_at_isia.cma.fr>
	* main author of the version 2.1.0.1
	* bugfixes


The following people have contributed minor changes, enhancements, bugfixes or
or support for a new language since version 2.1.0:
Ricardo ?, Sven-Erik Andersen, Alessandro Astarita, Borges Botelho,
Olivier Bussier, Michal Cihar, Neil Darlow, Kristof Hamann, Thomas Kläger,
Lubos Klokner, Martin Marconcini, Girish Nair, David Nordenberg,
Bernard M. Piller, Laurent Haas, "Sakamoto", www.securereality.com.au,
Michael Tacelosky, Daniel Villanueva, Vinay, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams,
Chee Wai, Jakub Wilk, Thomas Michael Winningham.


Original Credits of Version 2.1.0
---------------------------------

    This work is based on Peter Kuppelwieser's MySQL-Webadmin. It was his idea
    to create a web-based interface to MySQL using PHP3. Although I have not
    used any of his source-code, there are some concepts I've borrowed from
    him. phpMyAdmin was created because Peter told me he wasn't going to
    further develop his (great) tool.
    Thanks go to
    - Amalesh Kempf <ak-lsml_at_living-source.com> who contributed the
      code for the check when dropping a table or database. He also suggested
      that you should be able to specify the primary key on tbl_create.php3. To
      version 1.1.1 he contributed the ldi_*.php3-set (Import text-files) as
      well as a bug-report. Plus many smaller improvements.
    - Jan Legenhausen <jan_at_nrw.net>: He made many of the changes that
      were introduced in 1.3.0 (including quite significant ones like the
      authentication). For 1.4.1 he enhanced the table-dump feature. Plus
      bug-fixes and help.
    - Marc Delisle <DelislMa_at_CollegeSherbrooke.qc.ca> made phpMyAdmin
      language-independent by outsourcing the strings to a separate file. He
      also contributed the French translation.
    - Alexandr Bravo <abravo_at_hq.admiral.ru> who contributed
      tbl_select.php3, a feature to display only some fields from a table.
    - Chris Jackson <chrisj_at_ctel.net> added support for MySQL
      functions in tbl_change.php3. He also added the "Query by Example"
      feature in 2.0.
    - Dave Walton <walton_at_nordicdms.com> added support for multiple
      servers and is a regular contributor for bug-fixes.
    - Gabriel Ash <ga244_at_is8.nyu.edu> contributed the random access
      features for 2.0.6.
    The following people have contributed minor changes, enhancements, bugfixes
    or support for a new language:
    Jim Kraai, Jordi Bruguera, Miquel Obrador, Geert Lund, Thomas Kleemann,
    Alexander Leidinger, Kiko Albiol, Daniel C. Chao, Pavel Piankov,
    Sascha Kettler, Joe Pruett, Renato Lins, Mark Kronsbein, Jannis Hermanns,
    G. Wieggers.

    And thanks to everyone else who sent me email with suggestions, bug-reports
    and or just some feedback.

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