Installing phpMyAdmin - Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management - page 15

Apache is usually run as a service, so we have to ensure that the user under which
the service is running has normal read privileges to access our newly created
directory. The same principle applies to IIS, which uses the IUSR_machinename
user. This user must have read access to the directory. You can adjust permissions in
the Security/permissions tab of the directory's properties.
First Connection Configuration
Here we learn how to prepare and use the configuration file which contains
the parameters to connect to MySQL, and which can be customized as per our
requirements. In this chapter, we will concentrate on the parameters that deal with
connection and authentication. Other parameters will be discussed in the chapters
where the corresponding features are explained.
Before configuring, we can rename the directory phpMyAdmin-2.11.0-
all-languages-utf-8-only to something easier to remember,
like phpMyAdmin , phpmyadmin , admin , or whatever. This way, we
or our users will be able to visit an easily remembered URL to start
phpMyAdmin. We can also use a symbolic link if our server supports
this feature.
Configuration Principles
In versions before 2.8.0, a generic config.inc.php file was included in the
downloaded kit. Since 2.8.0, this file is no longer present in the directory structure.
Note that phpMyAdmin looks for this file in the first level directory—the same one
where index.php is located.
Without a configuration file, phpMyAdmin uses its default settings as defined
in libraries/config.default.php and tries to connect to a MySQL server on
localhost , the same machine where the web server is running, with user root
and password NO . This is the default setup produced by most MySQL installation
procedures, even though it is not really secure. However, if our freshly installed
MySQL server still has the default root account, we will be able to login easily and
see a warning given by phpMyAdmin about such lack of security.
We can verify this fact by opening our browser and visiting http://www.mydomain.
com/phpmyadmin —substituting the proper values for the domain part and the
directory part. If we see phpMyAdmin's home page—as described in Chapter 3—it
means the MySQL server is still configured by default.