How To Install and Secure phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 16.04
Introduction
While many users need the functionality of a database management system like MySQL, they may not feel comfortable interacting with the system solely from the MySQL prompt.
phpMyAdmin was created so that users can interact with MySQL through a web interface. In this guide, we’ll discuss how to install and secure phpMyAdmin so that you can safely use it to manage your databases from an Ubuntu 16.04 system.
Prerequisites
Before you get started with this guide, you need to have some basic steps completed.
First, we’ll assume that you are using a non-root user with sudo privileges, as described in steps 1-4 in the initial server setup of Ubuntu 16.04.
We’re also going to assume that you’ve completed a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) installation on your Ubuntu 16.04 server. If this is not completed yet, you can follow this guide on installing a LAMP stack on Ubuntu 16.04.
Finally, there are important security considerations when using software like phpMyAdmin, since it:
- Communicates directly with your MySQL installation
- Handles authentication using MySQL credentials
- Executes and returns results for arbitrary SQL queries
For these reasons, and because it is a widely-deployed PHP application which is frequently targeted for attack, you should never run phpMyAdmin on remote systems over a plain HTTP connection. If you do not have an existing domain configured with an SSL/TLS certificate, you can follow this guide on securing Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 16.04.
Once you are finished with these steps, you’re ready to get started with this guide.
