Guide: Installing phpMyAdmin for Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10

In this guide we will install and configure phpMyAdmin to work with Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10.

Prerequisites

You should be using a non-root user with sudo privileges as explained in Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10 Initial Server Setup.

You should also have your LEMP stack (Nginx, MySQL and PHP) already installed before continuing with this guide. If you don’t have these installed yet, please see Installing a LEMP Stack (Nginx, MySQL, PHP) on Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10

1. Install phpMyAdmin

Let’s begin by updating the list of available packages and installing phpMyAdmin.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

As there is no option for Nginx here, press TAB and then ENTER to continue without selecting a web server.

Select Yes and press ENTER to install and configure the database.

The MySQL application password is only used internally by phpMyAdmin to communicate with MySQL. You can leave this blank and a password will be generated automatically.

2. Create Symbolic Link

In order for Nginx to serve the phpMyAdmin files correctly, we must create a symbolic link from the phpMyAdmin directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin to the Nginx document root directory.

The default location of the Nginx document root should be /var/www/html/, though it could be different depending on your setup. If you followed a previous guide for setting up multiple domains, your document root may be located in somewhere like /var/www/example.com/public_html.

Let’s create a symbolic link from the phpMyAdmin directory to your document root. Here we will assume your document root is /var/www/html/ and we will simply add phpmyadmin to the end of it. This will allow us to access phpMyAdmin at example.com/phpmyadmin.

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

3. Test phpMyAdmin

You should now be able to access the phpMyAdmin web interface by visiting your server’s domain name or public IP address followed by /phpmyadmin. e.g. http://example.com/phpmyadmin or http://192.168.1.10/phpmyadmin

If you don’t have a domain name yet or don’t know your IP, you can find out with:

ip addr show eth0 | grep inet | awk '{ print $2; }' | sed 's/\/.*$//'

You can now log in with the user root. You will have set up this root user and password when installing MySQL for the first time.

You’re done! If you would like to set up some additional security for phpMyAdmin, continue to Step 4 and Step 5.

4. Obscure URL (Optional)

Bots and attackers continuously scan web servers for the phpMyAdmin login page, so it is recommended that you change the URL to something else.

In this example we are going to change it from example.com/phpmyadmin to example.com/pma_hidden.

In step 2, we created a symbolic link in the document root /var/www/html/phpmyadmin

All we need to do is to rename this symbolic link, in this example, to: pma_hidden. Make sure you enter the correct document root here. The default is /var/www/html though it may be something like /var/www/example.com/public_html/ on your server.

sudo mv /var/www/html/phpmyadmin /var/www/html/pma_hidden

You should now be able to access phpMyAdmin at example.com/pma_hidden

5. Secure phpMyAdmin (Optional)

To provide an additional layer of security, we can set up authentication in Nginx.

Firstly, generate a strong password and keep it safe.

We will now install apache2-utils, which can generate the .htpasswd file that works with both Nginx and Apache.

sudo apt-get install apache2-utils

Once installed, we can generate the .htpasswd file. Simply change username to the username you require. Generate a password and keep it safe.

sudo htpasswd -c /etc/nginx/.htpasswd username

There should now be a .htpasswd file containing your username and encrypted password. You can check with:

cat /etc/nginx/.htpasswd

We now need to add two directives to our Nginx configuration file. The location of the config file may vary depending on your setup, though the default is usually in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default. If you set up multiple domains in a previous guide, your config file may be located in somewhere like /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

This this example, we will assume the config file is in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default. Open the file to edit.

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

Scroll down and look for the location block and paste in a new block underneath it with the name of your obscured phpMyAdmin folder, in this example pma_hidden. (Use the right mouse button to paste)

. . .
location /pma_hidden {
        auth_basic "Restricted Access";
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;
}
. . .

Save file and exit (press CTRL + X, press Y and then press ENTER).

Check that the Nginx config file is valid.

sudo nginx -t

If valid, reload Nginx config.

sudo service nginx reload

Now when visiting example.com/pma_hidden, you should be presented with an authentication window.

You’re all done!

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