by Frank Mathew

Introduction

Using the mysql database software from the command-line to view and add databases and records could be very tedious. phpMyAdmin is a web-based application that makes using mysql a whole lot easier. But to install phpMyAdmin we have to already have apache, php, mysql and perl installed.

This short article lists the dependencies that we encountered and overcame when installing phpMyAdmin on an SGI Indy Workstation running IRIX 6.5.

Order

If you want to install all the above it would also involve installing perl as well and ideally the installation should be in the following order:

1. mysql (http://mysql.com/downloads/)
2. perl (http://www.perl.com/pub/a/language/info/software.html)
3. apache web server (http://httpd.apache.org/)
4. php (http://www.php.net/downloads.php)
5. phpMyAdmin (http://phpmyadmin.sourceforge.net/)

Dependencies for Each Package

mysql

• versions 3.22 onwards seem to work fine,

perl

• Before installing the latest version of perl make sure that the older versions are removed (binaries as well as libraries). There might be a soft link to the older versions in /usr/bin. Make sure these go as well.

apache

• If you intend to install php as a dynamic library that apache will use then you need to make sure that the module called so” is also installed while you configure and make apache. Since the make for php will not go through if this module is not installed with apache.
• So when you do the ./configure command as mentioned in the INSTALL file, add this to it as well –install-module=so.
• Current versions of apache do not run as root, Apache tries to create a user which maybe nobody” and makes the user belong to a group which maybe again nobody”. So it the httpd does not come up and you have errors in the error_log saying setuid failed then probably the user creation did not go through properly. So edit the httpd_conf file in apache/conf and make sure it is using a valid user and group name and make sure that the user and group is there in /etc/passwd and /etc/group as well.

php

• Php is installed as a dynamic library that will be used by apache to interpret php source files that are in the htdocs directory or one of its subdirectories (php files in this case should not be placed in the cgi-bin directory).
• While doing the ./configure command as mentioned in the INSTALL file, It is most likely that ./configure will not know where apxs is. So do configure using the following method:
• ./configure –with-mysql –with-apxs=/path-to-apache/bin/apxs
• Make sure that /path-to-apache/bin/apxs file has the right path to perl in it.

phpMyAdmin

• Uncompress the files in a folder under htdocs directory of apache.
• To setup you have to edit config.inc.php file, Use the following method to authenticate and make an addition in the file accordingly for each of the mysql servers. $cfgServers[1]['auth_type'] = 'http'; This method lets the browser ask you a mysqlusername and password to logon.