On Tue, 23 May 2017 13:43:20 -0500 Dennis Wicks <[email protected]> wrote:
> How do I get the setup procedure to run? > > I use a url of 127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin/setup like I found in > the docs but it keeps asking for a user and password. I have > tried many combos that I have found: root, admin, pma, > phpmyadmin. I tried using localhost in the url but it gets > changed to www.localhost.com! I tried setting the > config.sample.inc.php AllowNoPassword to TRUE but that > didn't help. I have run out of places to look and ideas. > > Does anybody know how to get this thing started? > > If I have to setup mysql first, that is just as great a > mystery! I was hoping that phpmyadmin would take care of > that for me too! > > Any help will be greatly appreciated!! > Yes, you've done it backwards, but it's no big deal in Debian. phpmyadmin needs the root password of mysql in order to install, and if you haven't installed mysql, it obviously doesn't have one. phpmyadmin itself needs to set up data in mysql. So remove phpmyadmin, then install mysql. The mysql installation will ask you to create a root password. Note that the mysql root user and his password are completely separate from the Linux root user and password. Don't lose this password, as mysql takes security seriously and will not allow you to recreate a root password unless you already have it. If you forget it, you need to reinstall, and all data that you can't manage to backup without the root password will be lost. A wise precaution is to backup all the data regularly, even if the computer itself is being backed up regularly. Having installed mysql, it will have created some data tables of its own for housekeeping. Now install phpmyadmin (it's really just a few scripts, you're not actually installing anything, just hooking it into the apache configuration). It will want the mysql root password in order to make some data of its own. As far as I recall, that's it. It is possible that there will be php or even apache issues, as both are much more tightly controlled than when I last set this up. It may be necessary to enable something here or there, but I suspect Debian will sort that out. You'll need at least a vague idea of how mysql works, as it's not really intuitive if you haven't used something like it before. There are reams of information and tutorials on the Net, in addition to the official mysql site. Note particularly that mysql users (again, completely separate from Linux users) are specified by both user name and client computer hostname. From a recent post of mine: "Note also what someone else here was confused about recently, that mysql knows users by both name and client computer hostname, so richard@comp1 is a different user to richard@comp2, and different again to richard@localhost and richard@%. The '%' is the SQL wildcard. As different users, they can have different privileges and passwords e.g richard@comp1 can use database fred but not database bill, and richard@localhost can use bill but not fred. Wordpress will almost certainly name its user(s) 'xxx@localhost', and that account will not work from anywhere else. I mention this in detail because it took me a while to get the hang of it. List the users/hosts with USE mysql; SELECT * FROM user; Don't mess with user privileges until you understand them, a large variety of privileges can exist globally, per database, per table and per column. A user set up by an application will (hopefully) have exactly the correct set of privileges." You are right for the most part, with phpmyadmin you shouldn't need to use the mysql command line, but it is worth knowing that it is there, and what you can do from it (i.e. everything) and if you ever have trouble with your web server, the command line will still be there. You may also one day want to involve some or all of your mysql databases in your backup scripts, and again, the command line is what you will need then.
