Authentication and Security - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Management - page 33

In this case, all deny rules will be applied first, followed by allow rules. If a case is
not mentioned in the rules, access is granted. Being more restrictive, we'd want to
deny by default. We can use:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['order'] = ' allow,deny ';
This time, all allow rules are applied first, followed by deny rules. If a case is not
mentioned in the rules, access is denied. The third (and most restrictive) way of
specifying rules order is:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['order'] = ' explicit ';
Now, deny rules are applied before allow rules. But for them to be accepted, a
username/IP address must be listed in the allow rules, and not in the deny rules.
Simplified rule for root access
As the root user is present in almost all MySQL installations, it's often the target of
attacks. Starting with phpMyAdmin 2.6.1, a parameter permits us to easily block all
logins of the MySQL's root account, using the following:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowRoot'] = FALSE;
Restricting the list of databases
Sometimes it is useful to avoid showing in the left panel, all the databases a user has
access to. phpMyAdmin offers two ways of restricting— only_db and hide_db .
To specify the list of what can be seen, the only_db parameter is used. It may contain
a database name or a list of database names. Only these databases will be seen in the
left panel:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['only_db'] = 'payroll';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['only_db'] = array('payroll', 'hr);
The database names can contain MySQL wildcard characters like _ and % . If an array
is used to specify many databases, they will be displayed on the interface in the same
order they are listed in the array.
Another feature of only_db is that you can use it not to restrict the list, but instead
to put emphasis on certain names that will be displayed on top of the list. Here, the
myspecial database name will appear first, followed by all other names:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['only_db'] = array('myspecial', '*');