Configuring PHPMyAdmin to connect to remote database

Question

After Googling the possibility of using PHPMyAdmin to connect to remote databases, I found this article, which confirms that this is supported after a simple config edit.

In the article, the author explains:

The file config.inc.php contains the configuration settings for your phpMyAdmin installation. It uses an array to store sets of config options for every server it can connect to and by default there is only one, your own machine, or localhost. In order to connect to another server, you would have to add another set of config options to the config array. A set of config options would look something similar to this:

$i++;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host']          = '';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['port']          = '';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['socket']        = '';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type']  = 'tcp';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension']     = 'mysql';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress']      = FALSE;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type']     = 'config';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']          = 'username';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']      = 'password';

Pay attention that the config array is called cfg and it's a multidimensional array and that all servers, have to be part of the $cfg["Servers"] inner array. The way this works is by using an incrementing variable $i that sets a different inner array for each server inside the $cfg["Servers"] array. For this to work you need to make sure each new set of config options starts with an incremented $i by using $i++.

However, when I browsed for this file in my PHPMyAdmin files, I found its contents to be different than expected:

<?php
/* vim: set expandtab sw=4 ts=4 sts=4: */
/**
 * Config file view and save screen
 *
 * @package PhpMyAdmin-Setup
 */

if (!defined('PHPMYADMIN')) {
    exit;
}

/**
 * Core libraries.
 */
require_once './libraries/config/FormDisplay.class.php';
require_once './setup/lib/index.lib.php';
require_once './setup/lib/ConfigGenerator.class.php';

$config_readable = false;
$config_writable = false;
$config_exists = false;
check_config_rw($config_readable, $config_writable, $config_exists);
?>
<h2><?php echo __('Configuration file') ?></h2>
<?php PMA_displayFormTop('config.php'); ?>
<input type="hidden" name="eol" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars(PMA_ifSetOr($_GET['eol'], 'unix')) ?>" />
<?php PMA_displayFieldsetTop('', '', null, array('class' => 'simple')); ?>
<tr>
    <td>
        <textarea cols="50" rows="20" name="textconfig" id="textconfig" spellcheck="false"><?php
            echo htmlspecialchars(ConfigGenerator::getConfigFile())
        ?></textarea>
    </td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td class="lastrow" style="text-align: left">
        <input type="submit" name="submit_download" value="<?php echo __('Download') ?>" class="green" />
        <input type="submit" name="submit_save" value="<?php echo __('Save') ?>"<?php
if (!$config_writable) {
    echo ' disabled="disabled"';
} ?> />
    </td>
</tr>
<?php
PMA_displayFieldsetBottomSimple();
PMA_displayFormBottom();
?>

Does anyone know where/how, in the more recent versions of PHPMyAdmin, this config data is stored and can be edited?

Answer 1

You're reading a file in the wrong directory.

The settings are stored in config.inc.php at the root of phpMyAdmin's installation directory; e.g. /usr/share/webapps/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php. Do not dig deeper than that.

(It's the same place where you can find files config.sample.inc.php, ChangeLog, favicon.ico, and such.)

Answer 2

I've discovered my mistake:

It appears that this isn't an issue of version difference, but of file name duplicates. The file name specified actually exists in 3 or more directories. Make sure you use the one found in the main PHPMyAdmin directory.