Server
1.1 My server is crashing each time a specific action is required or phpMyAdmin sends a blank page or a page full of cryptic characters to my browser, what can I do?
Try to set the $cfg['OBGzip']
directive to false
in your
config.inc.php
file and the zlib.output_compression
directive to
Off
in your php configuration file.
1.2 My Apache server crashes when using phpMyAdmin.
You should first try the latest versions of Apache (and possibly MySQL). If
your server keeps crashing, please ask for help in the various Apache support
groups.
1.5 Using phpMyAdmin on IIS, I’m facing crashes and/or many error messages with the HTTP.
This is a known problem with the PHP ISAPI filter: it’s not so stable.
Please use instead the cookie authentication mode.
1.6 I can’t use phpMyAdmin on PWS: nothing is displayed!
This seems to be a PWS bug. Filippo Simoncini found a workaround (at
this time there is no better fix): remove or comment the DOCTYPE
declarations (2 lines) from the scripts libraries/classes/Header.php
and index.php
.
1.7 How can I gzip a dump or a CSV export? It does not seem to work.
This feature is based on the gzencode()
PHP function to be more independent of the platform (Unix/Windows,
Safe Mode or not, and so on). So, you must have Zlib support
(--with-zlib
).
1.8 I cannot insert a text file in a table, and I get an error about safe mode being in effect.
Your uploaded file is saved by PHP in the “upload dir”, as defined in
php.ini
by the variable upload_tmp_dir
(usually the system
default is /tmp). We recommend the following setup for Apache
servers running in safe mode, to enable uploads of files while being
reasonably secure:
create a separate directory for uploads: mkdir /tmp/php
give ownership to the Apache server’s user.group: chown
apache.apache /tmp/php
give proper permission: chmod 600 /tmp/php
put upload_tmp_dir = /tmp/php
in php.ini
restart Apache
1.10 I’m having troubles when uploading files with phpMyAdmin running on a secure server. My browser is Internet Explorer and I’m using the Apache server.
As suggested by “Rob M” in the phpWizard forum, add this line to your
httpd.conf:
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown
It seems to clear up many problems between Internet Explorer and SSL.
1.11 I get an ‘open_basedir restriction’ while uploading a file from the import tab.
Since version 2.2.4, phpMyAdmin supports servers with open_basedir
restrictions. However you need to create temporary directory and configure it
as $cfg['TempDir']
. The uploaded files will be moved there,
and after execution of your SQL commands, removed.
1.12 I have lost my MySQL root password, what can I do?
phpMyAdmin does authenticate against MySQL server you’re using, so to recover
from phpMyAdmin password loss, you need to recover at MySQL level.
The MySQL manual explains how to reset the permissions.
If you are using MySQL server installed by your hosting provider, please
contact their support to recover the password for you.
1.15 I have problems with mysql.user column names.
In previous MySQL versions, the User
and Password
columns were
named user
and password
. Please modify your column names to
align with current standards.
1.16 I cannot upload big dump files (memory, HTTP or timeout problems).
Starting with version 2.7.0, the import engine has been re–written and
these problems should not occur. If possible, upgrade your phpMyAdmin
to the latest version to take advantage of the new import features.
The first things to check (or ask your host provider to check) are the values
of max_execution_time
, upload_max_filesize
, memory_limit
and
post_max_size
in the php.ini
configuration file. All of these
settings limit the maximum size of data that can be submitted and handled by
PHP. Please note that post_max_size
needs to be larger than
upload_max_filesize
. There exist several workarounds if your upload is too
big or your hosting provider is unwilling to change the settings:
Look at the $cfg['UploadDir']
feature. This allows one to upload a file to the server
via scp, FTP, or your favorite file transfer method. PhpMyAdmin is
then able to import the files from the temporary directory. More
information is available in the Configuration of this document.
Using a utility (such as BigDump) to split the files before
uploading. We cannot support this or any third party applications, but
are aware of users having success with it.
If you have shell (command line) access, use MySQL to import the files
directly. You can do this by issuing the “source” command from within
MySQL:
1.17 Which Database versions does phpMyAdmin support?
For MySQL, versions 5.5 and newer are supported.
For older MySQL versions, our Downloads page offers older phpMyAdmin versions
(which may have become unsupported).
For MariaDB, versions 5.5 and newer are supported.
1.17a I cannot connect to the MySQL server. It always returns the error message, “Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client”
You tried to access MySQL with an old MySQL client library. The
version of your MySQL client library can be checked in your phpinfo()
output. In general, it should have at least the same minor version as
your server - as mentioned in 1.17 Which Database versions does phpMyAdmin support?. This problem is
generally caused by using MySQL version 4.1 or newer. MySQL changed
the authentication hash and your PHP is trying to use the old method.
The proper solution is to use the mysqli extension with the proper client library to match
your MySQL installation. More
information (and several workarounds) are located in the MySQL
Documentation.
1.19 I can’t run the “display relations” feature because the script seems not to know the font face I’m using!
The TCPDF library we’re using for this feature requires some special
files to use font faces. Please refers to the TCPDF manual to build these files.
1.20 I receive an error about missing mysqli and mysql extensions.
To connect to a MySQL server, PHP needs a set of MySQL functions
called “MySQL extension”. This extension may be part of the PHP
distribution (compiled-in), otherwise it needs to be loaded
dynamically. Its name is probably mysqli.so or php_mysqli.dll.
phpMyAdmin tried to load the extension but failed. Usually, the
problem is solved by installing a software package called “PHP-MySQL”
or something similar.
There are currently two interfaces PHP provides as MySQL extensions - mysql
and mysqli
. The mysqli
is tried first, because it’s the best one.
This problem can be also caused by wrong paths in the php.ini
or using
wrong php.ini
.
Make sure that the extension files do exist in the folder which the
extension_dir
points to and that the corresponding lines in your
php.ini
are not commented out (you can use phpinfo()
to check
current setup):
[PHP]
; Directory in which the loadable extensions (modules) reside.
extension_dir = "C:/Apache2/modules/php/ext"
The php.ini
can be loaded from several locations (especially on
Windows), so please check you’re updating the correct one. If using Apache, you
can tell it to use specific path for this file using PHPIniDir
directive:
LoadFile "C:/php/php5ts.dll"
LoadModule php5_module "C:/php/php5apache2_2.dll"
<IfModule php5_module>
PHPIniDir "C:/PHP"
<Location>
AddType text/html .php
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php
</Location>
</IfModule>
In some rare cases this problem can be also caused by other extensions loaded
in PHP which prevent MySQL extensions to be loaded. If anything else fails, you
can try commenting out extensions for other databases from php.ini
.
1.21 I am running the CGI version of PHP under Unix, and I cannot log in using cookie auth.
In php.ini
, set mysql.max_links
higher than 1.
1.22 I don’t see the “Location of text file” field, so I cannot upload.
This is most likely because in php.ini
, your file_uploads
parameter is not set to “on”.
1.23 I’m running MySQL on a Win32 machine. Each time I create a new table the table and column names are changed to lowercase!
This happens because the MySQL directive lower_case_table_names
defaults to 1 (ON
) in the Win32 version of MySQL. You can change
this behavior by simply changing the directive to 0 (OFF
): Just
edit your my.ini
file that should be located in your Windows
directory and add the following line to the group [mysqld]:
set-variable = lower_case_table_names=0
Note
Forcing this variable to 0 with –lower-case-table-names=0 on a
case-insensitive filesystem and access MyISAM tablenames using different
lettercases, index corruption may result.
Next, save the file and restart the MySQL service. You can always
check the value of this directive using the query
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'lower_case_table_names';
1.25 I am running Apache with mod_gzip-1.3.26.1a on Windows XP, and I get problems, such as undefined variables when I run a SQL query.
A tip from Jose Fandos: put a comment on the following two lines in
httpd.conf, like this:
# mod_gzip_item_include file \.php$
# mod_gzip_item_include mime "application/x-httpd-php.*"
as this version of mod_gzip on Apache (Windows) has problems handling
PHP scripts. Of course you have to restart Apache.
1.27 I get empty page when I want to view huge page (eg. db_structure.php with plenty of tables).
This was caused by a PHP bug that occur when
GZIP output buffering is enabled. If you turn off it (by
$cfg['OBGzip']
in config.inc.php
), it should work.
This bug will has been fixed in PHP 5.0.0.
1.28 My MySQL server sometimes refuses queries and returns the message ‘Errorcode: 13’. What does this mean?
This can happen due to a MySQL bug when having database / table names
with upper case characters although lower_case_table_names
is
set to 1. To fix this, turn off this directive, convert all database
and table names to lower case and turn it on again. Alternatively,
there’s a bug-fix available starting with MySQL 3.23.56 /
4.0.11-gamma.
1.29 When I create a table or modify a column, I get an error and the columns are duplicated.
It is possible to configure Apache in such a way that PHP has problems
interpreting .php files.
The problems occur when two different (and conflicting) set of
directives are used:
SetOutputFilter PHP
SetInputFilter PHP
and
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
In the case we saw, one set of directives was in
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
, while the other set was in
/etc/httpd/conf/addon-modules/php.conf
. The recommended way is
with AddType
, so just comment out the first set of lines and
restart Apache:
#SetOutputFilter PHP
#SetInputFilter PHP
1.30 I get the error “navigation.php: Missing hash”.
This problem is known to happen when the server is running Turck
MMCache but upgrading MMCache to version 2.3.21 solves the problem.
1.31 Which PHP versions does phpMyAdmin support?
Since release 4.5, phpMyAdmin supports only PHP 5.5 and newer. Since release
4.1 phpMyAdmin supports only PHP 5.3 and newer. For PHP 5.2 you can use 4.0.x
releases.
PHP 7 is supported since phpMyAdmin 4.6, PHP 7.1 is supported since 4.6.5,
PHP 7.2 is supported since 4.7.4.
HHVM is supported up to phpMyAdmin 4.8.
Since release 5.0, phpMyAdmin supports only PHP 7.1 and newer.
1.32 Can I use HTTP authentication with IIS?
Yes. This procedure was tested with phpMyAdmin 2.6.1, PHP 4.3.9 in
ISAPI mode under IIS 5.1.
In your php.ini
file, set cgi.rfc2616_headers = 0
In Web Site Properties -> File/Directory Security -> Anonymous
Access
dialog box, check the Anonymous access
checkbox and
uncheck any other checkboxes (i.e. uncheck Basic authentication
,
Integrated Windows authentication
, and Digest
if it’s
enabled.) Click OK
.
In Custom Errors
, select the range of 401;1
through 401;5
and click the Set to Default
button.
1.34 Can I directly access a database or table pages?
Yes. Out of the box, you can use a URL like
http://server/phpMyAdmin/index.php?server=X&db=database&table=table&target=script
.
For server
you can use the server number
which refers to the numeric host index (from $i
) in
config.inc.php
. The table and script parts are optional.
If you want a URL like
http://server/phpMyAdmin/database[/table][/script]
, you need to do some additional configuration. The following
lines apply only for the Apache web server.
First, make sure that you have enabled some features within the Apache global
configuration. You need Options SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
and AllowOverride
FileInfo
enabled for directory where phpMyAdmin is installed and you
need mod_rewrite to be enabled. Then you just need to create the
following .htaccess file in root folder of phpMyAdmin installation (don’t
forget to change directory name inside of it):
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /path_to_phpMyAdmin
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-z_]+\.php)$ index.php?db=$1&table=$2&target=$3 [R]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-z_]+\.php)$ index.php?db=$1&target=$2 [R]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ index.php?db=$1&table=$2 [R]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ index.php?db=$1 [R]
Changed in version 5.1.0: Support for using the target
parameter was removed in phpMyAdmin 5.1.0.
Use the route
parameter instead.
1.35 Can I use HTTP authentication with Apache CGI?
Yes. However you need to pass authentication variable to CGI using
following rewrite rule:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=REMOTE_USER:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]
1.36 I get an error “500 Internal Server Error”.
There can be many explanations to this and a look at your server’s
error log file might give a clue.
1.37 I run phpMyAdmin on cluster of different machines and password encryption in cookie auth doesn’t work.
If your cluster consist of different architectures, PHP code used for
encryption/decryption won’t work correctly. This is caused by use of
pack/unpack functions in code. Only solution is to use openssl
extension which works fine in this case.
1.38 Can I use phpMyAdmin on a server on which Suhosin is enabled?
Yes but the default configuration values of Suhosin are known to cause
problems with some operations, for example editing a table with many
columns and no primary key or with textual primary key.
Suhosin configuration might lead to malfunction in some cases and it
can not be fully avoided as phpMyAdmin is kind of application which
needs to transfer big amounts of columns in single HTTP request, what
is something what Suhosin tries to prevent. Generally all
suhosin.request.*
, suhosin.post.*
and suhosin.get.*
directives can have negative effect on phpMyAdmin usability. You can
always find in your error logs which limit did cause dropping of
variable, so you can diagnose the problem and adjust matching
configuration variable.
The default values for most Suhosin configuration options will work in
most scenarios, however you might want to adjust at least following
parameters:
To further improve security, we also recommend these modifications:
You can also disable the warning using the $cfg['SuhosinDisableWarning']
.
1.39 When I try to connect via https, I can log in, but then my connection is redirected back to http. What can cause this behavior?
This is caused by the fact that PHP scripts have no knowledge that the site is
using https. Depending on used webserver, you should configure it to let PHP
know about URL and scheme used to access it.
For example in Apache ensure that you have enabled SSLOptions
and
StdEnvVars
in the configuration.
1.40 When accessing phpMyAdmin via an Apache reverse proxy, cookie login does not work.
To be able to use cookie auth Apache must know that it has to rewrite
the set-cookie headers. Example from the Apache 2.2 documentation:
ProxyPass /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/
ProxyPassReverse /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/
ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain backend.example.com public.example.com
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / /mirror/foo/
Note: if the backend url looks like http://server/~user/phpmyadmin
, the
tilde (~) must be url encoded as %7E in the ProxyPassReverse* lines.
This is not specific to phpmyadmin, it’s just the behavior of Apache.
ProxyPass /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/~user/phpmyadmin
ProxyPassReverse /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/%7Euser/phpmyadmin
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath /%7Euser/phpmyadmin /mirror/foo
1.41 When I view a database and ask to see its privileges, I get an error about an unknown column.
The MySQL server’s privilege tables are not up to date, you need to
run the mysql_upgrade command on the server.
1.42 How can I prevent robots from accessing phpMyAdmin?
You can add various rules to .htaccess to filter access based on user agent
field. This is quite easy to circumvent, but could prevent at least
some robots accessing your installation.
RewriteEngine on
# Allow only GET and POST verbs
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !^(GET|POST)$ [NC,OR]
# Ban Typical Vulnerability Scanners and others
# Kick out Script Kiddies
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(java|curl|wget).* [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*(libwww-perl|curl|wget|python|nikto|wkito|pikto|scan|acunetix).* [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*(winhttp|HTTrack|clshttp|archiver|loader|email|harvest|extract|grab|miner).* [NC,OR]
# Ban Search Engines, Crawlers to your administrative panel
# No reasons to access from bots
# Ultimately Better than the useless robots.txt
# Did google respect robots.txt?
# Try google: intitle:phpMyAdmin intext:"Welcome to phpMyAdmin *.*.*" intext:"Log in" -wiki -forum -forums -questions intext:"Cookies must be enabled"
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*(AdsBot-Google|ia_archiver|Scooter|Ask.Jeeves|Baiduspider|Exabot|FAST.Enterprise.Crawler|FAST-WebCrawler|www\.neomo\.de|Gigabot|Mediapartners-Google|Google.Desktop|Feedfetcher-Google|Googlebot|heise-IT-Markt-Crawler|heritrix|ibm.com\cs/crawler|ICCrawler|ichiro|MJ12bot|MetagerBot|msnbot-NewsBlogs|msnbot|msnbot-media|NG-Search|lucene.apache.org|NutchCVS|OmniExplorer_Bot|online.link.validator|psbot0|Seekbot|Sensis.Web.Crawler|SEO.search.Crawler|Seoma.\[SEO.Crawler\]|SEOsearch|Snappy|www.urltrends.com|www.tkl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~crawler|SynooBot|crawleradmin.t-info@telekom.de|TurnitinBot|voyager|W3.SiteSearch.Crawler|W3C-checklink|W3C_Validator|www.WISEnutbot.com|yacybot|Yahoo-MMCrawler|Yahoo\!.DE.Slurp|Yahoo\!.Slurp|YahooSeeker).* [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
1.43 Why can’t I display the structure of my table containing hundreds of columns?
Because your PHP’s memory_limit
is too low; adjust it in php.ini
.
1.44 How can I reduce the installed size of phpMyAdmin on disk?
Some users have requested to be able to reduce the size of the phpMyAdmin installation.
This is not recommended and could lead to confusion over missing features, but can be done.
A list of files and corresponding functionality which degrade gracefully when removed include:
./vendor/tecnickcom/tcpdf
folder (exporting to PDF)
./locale/
folder, or unused subfolders (interface translations)
Any unused themes in ./themes/
./js/vendor/jquery/src/
(included for licensing reasons)
./js/line_counts.php
(removed in phpMyAdmin 4.8)
./doc/
(documentation)
./setup/
(setup script)
./examples/
./sql/
(SQL scripts to configure advanced functionality)
./js/vendor/openlayers/
(GIS visualization)
1.45 I get an error message about unknown authentication method caching_sha2_password when trying to log in
When logging in using MySQL version 8 or newer, you may encounter an error message like this:
mysqli_real_connect(): The server requested authentication method unknown to the client [caching_sha2_password]
mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/2054): The server requested authentication method unknown to the client
This error is because of a version compatibility problem between PHP and MySQL. The MySQL project introduced a new authentication
method (our tests show this began with version 8.0.11) however PHP did not include the ability to use that authentication method.
PHP reports that this was fixed in PHP version 7.4.
Users experiencing this are encouraged to upgrade their PHP installation, however a workaround exists. Your MySQL user account
can be set to use the older authentication with a command such as
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'PASSWORD';
Known limitations
3.1 When using HTTP authentication, a user who logged out can not log in again in with the same nick.
This is related to the authentication mechanism (protocol) used by
phpMyAdmin. To bypass this problem: just close all the opened browser
windows and then go back to phpMyAdmin. You should be able to log in
again.
3.2 When dumping a large table in compressed mode, I get a memory limit error or a time limit error.
Compressed dumps are built in memory and because of this are limited
to php’s memory limit. For gzip/bzip2 exports this can be overcome
since 2.5.4 using $cfg['CompressOnFly']
(enabled by default).
zip exports can not be handled this way, so if you need zip files for larger
dump, you have to use another way.
3.5 When using nested folders, multiple hierarchies are displayed in a wrong manner.
Please note that you should not use the separating string multiple
times without any characters between them, or at the beginning/end of
your table name. If you have to, think about using another
TableSeparator or disabling that feature.
3.7 I have table with many (100+) columns and when I try to browse table I get series of errors like “Warning: unable to parse url”. How can this be fixed?
Your table neither have a primary key nor an unique key, so we must
use a long expression to identify this row. This causes problems to
parse_url function. The workaround is to create a primary key
or unique key.
3.9 I get error messages when using “–sql_mode=ANSI” for the MySQL server.
When MySQL is running in ANSI-compatibility mode, there are some major
differences in how SQL is structured (see
<https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/sql-mode.html>). Most important of all, the
quote-character (”) is interpreted as an identifier quote character and not as
a string quote character, which makes many internal phpMyAdmin operations into
invalid SQL statements. There is no
workaround to this behaviour. News to this item will be posted in issue
#7383.
3.10 Homonyms and no primary key: When the results of a SELECT display more that one column with the same value (for example SELECT lastname from employees where firstname like 'A%'
and two “Smith” values are displayed), if I click Edit I cannot be sure that I am editing the intended row.
Please make sure that your table has a primary key, so that phpMyAdmin
can use it for the Edit and Delete links.
3.11 The number of rows for InnoDB tables is not correct.
phpMyAdmin uses a quick method to get the row count, and this method only
returns an approximate count in the case of InnoDB tables. See
$cfg['MaxExactCount']
for a way to modify those results, but
this could have a serious impact on performance.
However, one can easily replace the approximate row count with exact count by
simply clicking on the approximate count. This can also be done for all tables
at once by clicking on the rows sum displayed at the bottom.
3.13 I get an error when entering USE
followed by a db name containing an hyphen.
The tests I have made with MySQL 5.1.49 shows that the API does not
accept this syntax for the USE command.
3.14 I am not able to browse a table when I don’t have the right to SELECT one of the columns.
This has been a known limitation of phpMyAdmin since the beginning and
it’s not likely to be solved in the future.
3.18 When I import a CSV file that contains multiple tables, they are lumped together into a single table.
There is no reliable way to differentiate tables in CSV format. For the
time being, you will have to break apart CSV files containing multiple
tables.
3.19 When I import a file and have phpMyAdmin determine the appropriate data structure it only uses int, decimal, and varchar types.
Currently, the import type-detection system can only assign these
MySQL types to columns. In future, more will likely be added but for
the time being you will have to edit the structure to your liking
post-import. Also, you should note the fact that phpMyAdmin will use
the size of the largest item in any given column as the column size
for the appropriate type. If you know you will be adding larger items
to that column then you should manually adjust the column sizes
accordingly. This is done for the sake of efficiency.
3.20 After upgrading, some bookmarks are gone or their content cannot be shown.
At some point, the character set used to store bookmark content has changed.
It’s better to recreate your bookmark from the newer phpMyAdmin version.
3.21 I am unable to log in with a username containing unicode characters such as á.
This can happen if MySQL server is not configured to use utf-8 as default
charset. This is a limitation of how PHP and the MySQL server interact; there
is no way for PHP to set the charset before authenticating.
Browsers or client OS
5.1 I get an out of memory error, and my controls are non-functional, when trying to create a table with more than 14 columns.
We could reproduce this problem only under Win98/98SE. Testing under
WinNT4 or Win2K, we could easily create more than 60 columns. A
workaround is to create a smaller number of columns, then come back to
your table properties and add the other columns.
5.3 I have problems dumping tables with Konqueror (phpMyAdmin 2.2.2).
With Konqueror 2.1.1: plain dumps, zip and gzip dumps work ok, except
that the proposed file name for the dump is always ‘tbl_dump.php’.
The bzip2 dumps don’t seem to work. With Konqueror 2.2.1: plain dumps
work; zip dumps are placed into the user’s temporary directory, so
they must be moved before closing Konqueror, or else they disappear.
gzip dumps give an error message. Testing needs to be done for
Konqueror 2.2.2.
5.4 I can’t use the cookie authentication mode because Internet Explorer never stores the cookies.
MS Internet Explorer seems to be really buggy about cookies, at least
till version 6.
5.7 I refresh (reload) my browser, and come back to the welcome page.
Some browsers support right-clicking into the frame you want to
refresh, just do this in the right frame.
5.8 With Mozilla 0.9.7 I have problems sending a query modified in the query box.
Looks like a Mozilla bug: 0.9.6 was OK. We will keep an eye on future
Mozilla versions.
5.9 With Mozilla 0.9.? to 1.0 and Netscape 7.0-PR1 I can’t type a whitespace in the SQL-Query edit area: the page scrolls down.
This is a Mozilla bug (see bug #26882 at BugZilla).
5.11 Extended-ASCII characters like German umlauts are displayed wrong.
Please ensure that you have set your browser’s character set to the
one of the language file you have selected on phpMyAdmin’s start page.
Alternatively, you can try the auto detection mode that is supported
by the recent versions of the most browsers.
5.12 Mac OS X Safari browser changes special characters to “?”.
This issue has been reported by a macOS user, who adds that Chimera,
Netscape and Mozilla do not have this problem.
5.16 With Internet Explorer, I get “Access is denied” Javascript errors. Or I cannot make phpMyAdmin work under Windows.
Please check the following points:
Maybe you have defined your $cfg['PmaAbsoluteUri']
setting in
config.inc.php
to an IP address and you are starting phpMyAdmin
with a URL containing a domain name, or the reverse situation.
Security settings in IE and/or Microsoft Security Center are too high,
thus blocking scripts execution.
The Windows Firewall is blocking Apache and MySQL. You must allow
HTTP ports (80 or 443) and MySQL
port (usually 3306) in the “in” and “out” directions.
5.17 With Firefox, I cannot delete rows of data or drop a database.
Many users have confirmed that the Tabbrowser Extensions plugin they
installed in their Firefox is causing the problem.
5.19 I get JavaScript errors in my browser.
Issues have been reported with some combinations of browser
extensions. To troubleshoot, disable all extensions then clear your
browser cache to see if the problem goes away.
5.20 I get errors about violating Content Security Policy.
If you see errors like:
Refused to apply inline style because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive
This is usually caused by some software, which wrongly rewrites
headers. Usually this is caused by
antivirus proxy or browser addons which are causing such errors.
If you see these errors, try disabling the HTTP proxy in antivirus or disable
the rewriting in it. If that doesn’t
help, try disabling browser extensions.
Alternatively it can be also server configuration issue (if the webserver is
configured to emit headers, they can
override the ones from phpMyAdmin).
Programs known to cause these kind of errors:
5.21 I get errors about potentially unsafe operation when browsing table or executing SQL query.
If you see errors like:
A potentially unsafe operation has been detected in your request to this site.
This is usually caused by web application firewall doing requests filtering. It
tries to prevent SQL injection, however phpMyAdmin is tool designed to execute
SQL queries, thus it makes it unusable.
Please allow phpMyAdmin scripts from the web application firewall settings
or disable it completely for phpMyAdmin path.
Programs known to cause these kind of errors:
Using phpMyAdmin
6.1 I can’t insert new rows into a table / I can’t create a table - MySQL brings up a SQL error.
Examine the SQL error with care.
Often the problem is caused by specifying a wrong column-type. Common
errors include:
Also, look at the syntax chapter in the MySQL manual to confirm that
your syntax is correct.
6.2 When I create a table, I set an index for two columns and phpMyAdmin generates only one index with those two columns.
This is the way to create a multi-columns index. If you want two
indexes, create the first one when creating the table, save, then
display the table properties and click the Index link to create the
other index.
6.3 How can I insert a null value into my table?
Since version 2.2.3, you have a checkbox for each column that can be
null. Before 2.2.3, you had to enter “null”, without the quotes, as
the column’s value. Since version 2.5.5, you have to use the checkbox
to get a real NULL value, so if you enter “NULL” this means you want a
literal NULL in the column, and not a NULL value (this works in PHP4).
6.4 How can I backup my database or table?
Click on a database or table name in the navigation panel, the properties will
be displayed. Then on the menu, click “Export”, you can dump the structure, the
data, or both. This will generate standard SQL statements that can be
used to recreate your database/table. You will need to choose “Save as file”,
so that phpMyAdmin can transmit the resulting dump to your station. Depending
on your PHP configuration, you will see options to compress the dump. See also
the $cfg['ExecTimeLimit']
configuration variable. For
additional help on this subject, look for the word “dump” in this document.
6.6 How can I use the relation table in Query-by-example?
Here is an example with the tables persons, towns and countries, all
located in the database “mydb”. If you don’t have a pma__relation
table, create it as explained in the configuration section. Then
create the example tables:
CREATE TABLE REL_countries (
country_code char(1) NOT NULL default '',
description varchar(10) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (country_code)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;
INSERT INTO REL_countries VALUES ('C', 'Canada');
CREATE TABLE REL_persons (
id tinyint(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
person_name varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
town_code varchar(5) default '0',
country_code char(1) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (id)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;
INSERT INTO REL_persons VALUES (11, 'Marc', 'S', 'C');
INSERT INTO REL_persons VALUES (15, 'Paul', 'S', 'C');
CREATE TABLE REL_towns (
town_code varchar(5) NOT NULL default '0',
description varchar(30) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (town_code)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;
INSERT INTO REL_towns VALUES ('S', 'Sherbrooke');
INSERT INTO REL_towns VALUES ('M', 'Montréal');
To setup appropriate links and display information:
on table “REL_persons” click Structure, then Relation view
for “town_code”, choose from dropdowns, “mydb”, “REL_towns”, “code”
for foreign database, table and column respectively
for “country_code”, choose from dropdowns, “mydb”, “REL_countries”,
“country_code” for foreign database, table and column respectively
on table “REL_towns” click Structure, then Relation view
in “Choose column to display”, choose “description”
repeat the two previous steps for table “REL_countries”
Then test like this:
Click on your db name in the navigation panel
Choose “Query”
Use tables: persons, towns, countries
Click “Update query”
In the columns row, choose persons.person_name and click the “Show”
tickbox
Do the same for towns.description and countries.descriptions in the
other 2 columns
Click “Update query” and you will see in the query box that the
correct joins have been generated
Click “Submit query”
6.8 How can I produce a PDF schema of my database?
First the configuration variables “relation”, “table_coords” and
“pdf_pages” have to be filled in. Then you need to think about your
schema layout. Which tables will go on which pages?
Select your database in the navigation panel.
Choose “Operations” in the navigation bar at the top.
Choose “Edit PDF Pages” near the
bottom of the page.
Enter a name for the first PDF page
and click Go. If you like, you can use the “automatic layout,” which
will put all your linked tables onto the new page.
Select the name of the new page (making sure the Edit radio button is
selected) and click Go.
Select a table from the list, enter its coordinates and click Save.
Coordinates are relative; your diagram will be automatically scaled to
fit the page. When initially placing tables on the page, just pick any
coordinates – say, 50x50. After clicking Save, you can then use the
6.28 How can I easily edit relational schema for export? to position the element correctly.
When you’d like to look at your PDF, first be sure to click the Save
button beneath the list of tables and coordinates, to save any changes you
made there. Then scroll all the way down, select the PDF options you
want, and click Go.
Internet Explorer for Windows may suggest an incorrect filename when
you try to save a generated PDF.
When saving a generated PDF, be
sure that the filename ends in “.pdf”, for example “schema.pdf”.
Browsers on other operating systems, and other browsers on Windows, do
not have this problem.
6.10 When creating a privilege, what happens with underscores in the database name?
If you do not put a backslash before the underscore, this is a
wildcard grant, and the underscore means “any character”. So, if the
database name is “john_db”, the user would get rights to john1db,
john2db … If you put a backslash before the underscore, it means
that the database name will have a real underscore.
6.11 What is the curious symbol ø in the statistics pages?
It means “average”.
6.12 I want to understand some Export options.
Structure:
“Add DROP TABLE” will add a line telling MySQL to drop the table, if it already
exists during the import. It does NOT drop the table after your
export, it only affects the import file.
“If Not Exists” will only create the table if it doesn’t exist.
Otherwise, you may get an error if the table name exists but has a
different structure.
“Add AUTO_INCREMENT value” ensures that AUTO_INCREMENT value (if
any) will be included in backup.
“Enclose table and column names with backquotes” ensures that column
and table names formed with special characters are protected.
“Add into comments” includes column comments, relations, and media
types set in the pmadb in the dump as SQL comments
(/* xxx */).
Data:
“Complete inserts” adds the column names on every INSERT command, for
better documentation (but resulting file is bigger).
“Extended inserts” provides a shorter dump file by using only once the
INSERT verb and the table name.
“Delayed inserts” are best explained in the MySQL manual - INSERT DELAYED Syntax.
“Ignore inserts” treats errors as a warning instead. Again, more info
is provided in the MySQL manual - INSERT Syntax, but basically with
this selected, invalid values are adjusted and inserted rather than
causing the entire statement to fail.
6.13 I would like to create a database with a dot in its name.
This is a bad idea, because in MySQL the syntax “database.table” is
the normal way to reference a database and table name. Worse, MySQL
will usually let you create a database with a dot, but then you cannot
work with it, nor delete it.
6.15 I want to add a BLOB column and put an index on it, but MySQL says “BLOB column ‘…’ used in key specification without a key length”.
The right way to do this, is to create the column without any indexes,
then display the table structure and use the “Create an index” dialog.
On this page, you will be able to choose your BLOB column, and set a
size to the index, which is the condition to create an index on a BLOB
column.
6.16 How can I simply move in page with plenty editing fields?
You can use Ctrl+arrows (Option+Arrows in Safari) for moving on
most pages with many editing fields (table structure changes, row editing,
etc.).
6.18 Bookmarks: Where can I store bookmarks? Why can’t I see any bookmarks below the query box? What are these variables for?
You need to have configured the phpMyAdmin configuration storage for using bookmarks
feature. Once you have done that, you can use bookmarks in the SQL tab.
6.19 How can I create simple LATEX document to include exported table?
You can simply include table in your LATEX documents,
minimal sample document should look like following one (assuming you
have table exported in file table.tex
):
\documentclass{article} % or any class you want
\usepackage{longtable} % for displaying table
\begin{document} % start of document
\include{table} % including exported table
\end{document} % end of document
6.20 I see a lot of databases which are not mine, and cannot access them.
You have one of these global privileges: CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, SHOW
DATABASES, LOCK TABLES. Those privileges also enable users to see all the
database names. So if your users do not need those privileges, you can remove
them and their databases list will shorten.
6.21 In edit/insert mode, how can I see a list of possible values for a column, based on some foreign table?
You have to setup appropriate links between the tables, and also setup
the “display column” in the foreign table. See 6.6 How can I use the relation table in Query-by-example? for an
example. Then, if there are 100 values or less in the foreign table, a
drop-down list of values will be available. You will see two lists of
values, the first list containing the key and the display column, the
second list containing the display column and the key. The reason for
this is to be able to type the first letter of either the key or the
display column. For 100 values or more, a distinct window will appear,
to browse foreign key values and choose one. To change the default
limit of 100, see $cfg['ForeignKeyMaxLimit']
.
6.22 Bookmarks: Can I execute a default bookmark automatically when entering Browse mode for a table?
Yes. If a bookmark has the same label as a table name and it’s not a
public bookmark, it will be executed.
6.23 Export: I heard phpMyAdmin can export Microsoft Excel files?
You can use CSV for Microsoft Excel,
which works out of the box.
Changed in version 3.4.5: Since phpMyAdmin 3.4.5 support for direct export to Microsoft Excel version
97 and newer was dropped.
6.26 How can I select a range of rows?
Click the first row of the range, hold the shift key and click the
last row of the range. This works everywhere you see rows, for example
in Browse mode or on the Structure page.
6.28 How can I easily edit relational schema for export?
By clicking on the button ‘toggle scratchboard’ on the page where you
edit x/y coordinates of those elements you can activate a scratchboard
where all your elements are placed. By clicking on an element, you can
move them around in the pre-defined area and the x/y coordinates will
get updated dynamically. Likewise, when entering a new position
directly into the input field, the new position in the scratchboard
changes after your cursor leaves the input field.
You have to click on the ‘OK’-button below the tables to save the new
positions. If you want to place a new element, first add it to the
table of elements and then you can drag the new element around.
By changing the paper size and the orientation you can change the size
of the scratchboard as well. You can do so by just changing the
dropdown field below, and the scratchboard will resize automatically,
without interfering with the current placement of the elements.
If ever an element gets out of range you can either enlarge the paper
size or click on the ‘reset’ button to place all elements below each
other.
6.29 Why can’t I get a chart from my query result table?
Not every table can be put to the chart. Only tables with one, two or
three columns can be visualised as a chart. Moreover the table must be
in a special format for chart script to understand it. Currently
supported formats can be found in Charts.
6.30 Import: How can I import ESRI Shapefiles?
An ESRI Shapefile is actually a set of several files, where .shp file
contains geometry data and .dbf file contains data related to those
geometry data. To read data from .dbf file you need to have PHP
compiled with the dBase extension (–enable-dbase). Otherwise only
geometry data will be imported.
To upload these set of files you can use either of the following
methods:
Configure upload directory with $cfg['UploadDir']
, upload both .shp and .dbf files with
the same filename and chose the .shp file from the import page.
Create a zip archive with .shp and .dbf files and import it. For this
to work, you need to set $cfg['TempDir']
to a place where the web server user can
write (for example './tmp'
).
To create the temporary directory on a UNIX-based system, you can do:
cd phpMyAdmin
mkdir tmp
chmod o+rwx tmp
6.31 How do I create a relation in designer?
To select relation, click: The display column is shown in pink. To
set/unset a column as the display column, click the “Choose column to
display” icon, then click on the appropriate column name.
6.32 How can I use the zoom search feature?
The Zoom search feature is an alternative to table search feature. It allows
you to explore a table by representing its data in a scatter plot. You can
locate this feature by selecting a table and clicking the Search
tab. One of the sub-tabs in the Table Search page is
Zoom Search.
Consider the table REL_persons in 6.6 How can I use the relation table in Query-by-example? for
an example. To use zoom search, two columns need to be selected, for
example, id and town_code. The id values will be represented on one
axis and town_code values on the other axis. Each row will be
represented as a point in a scatter plot based on its id and
town_code. You can include two additional search criteria apart from
the two fields to display.
You can choose which field should be
displayed as label for each point. If a display column has been set
for the table (see 6.7 How can I use the “display column” feature?), it is taken as the label unless
you specify otherwise. You can also select the maximum number of rows
you want to be displayed in the plot by specifing it in the ‘Max rows
to plot’ field. Once you have decided over your criteria, click ‘Go’
to display the plot.
After the plot is generated, you can use the
mousewheel to zoom in and out of the plot. In addition, panning
feature is enabled to navigate through the plot. You can zoom-in to a
certain level of detail and use panning to locate your area of
interest. Clicking on a point opens a dialogue box, displaying field
values of the data row represented by the point. You can edit the
values if required and click on submit to issue an update query. Basic
instructions on how to use can be viewed by clicking the ‘How to use?’
link located just above the plot.
6.33 When browsing a table, how can I copy a column name?
Selecting the name of the column within the browse table header cell
for copying is difficult, as the columns support reordering by
dragging the header cells as well as sorting by clicking on the linked
column name. To copy a column name, double-click on the empty area
next to the column name, when the tooltip tells you to do so. This
will show you an input box with the column name. You may right-click
the column name within this input box to copy it to your clipboard.
6.34 How can I use the Favorite Tables feature?
Favorite Tables feature is very much similar to Recent Tables feature.
It allows you to add a shortcut for the frequently used tables of any
database in the navigation panel . You can easily navigate to any table
in the list by simply choosing it from the list. These tables are stored
in your browser’s local storage if you have not configured your
phpMyAdmin Configuration Storage. Otherwise these entries are stored in
phpMyAdmin Configuration Storage.
IMPORTANT: In absence of phpMyAdmin Configuration Storage, your Favorite
tables may be different in different browsers based on your different
selections in them.
To add a table to Favorite list simply click on the Gray star in front
of a table name in the list of tables of a Database and wait until it
turns to Yellow.
To remove a table from list, simply click on the Yellow star and
wait until it turns Gray again.
Using $cfg['NumFavoriteTables']
in your config.inc.php
file, you can define the maximum number of favorite tables shown in the
navigation panel. Its default value is 10.
6.35 How can I use the Range search feature?
With the help of range search feature, one can specify a range of values for
particular column(s) while performing search operation on a table from the Search
tab.
To use this feature simply click on the BETWEEN or NOT BETWEEN operators
from the operator select list in front of the column name. On choosing one of the
above options, a dialog box will show up asking for the Minimum and Maximum
value for that column. Only the specified range of values will be included
in case of BETWEEN and excluded in case of NOT BETWEEN from the final results.
Note: The Range search feature will work only Numeric and Date data type columns.
6.36 What is Central columns and how can I use this feature?
As the name suggests, the Central columns feature enables to maintain a central list of
columns per database to avoid similar name for the same data element and bring consistency
of data type for the same data element. You can use the central list of columns to
add an element to any table structure in that database which will save from writing
similar column name and column definition.
To add a column to central list, go to table structure page, check the columns you want
to include and then simply click on “Add to central columns”. If you want to add all
unique columns from more than one table from a database then go to database structure page,
check the tables you want to include and then select “Add columns to central list”.
To remove a column from central list, go to Table structure page, check the columns you want
to remove and then simply click on “Remove from central columns”. If you want to remove all
columns from more than one tables from a database then go to database structure page,
check the tables you want to include and then select “Remove columns from central list”.
To view and manage the central list, select the database you want to manage central columns
for then from the top menu click on “Central columns”. You will be taken to a page where
you will have options to edit, delete or add new columns to central list.
6.37 How can I use Improve Table structure feature?
Improve table structure feature helps to bring the table structure upto
Third Normal Form. A wizard is presented to user which asks questions about the
elements during the various steps for normalization and a new structure is proposed
accordingly to bring the table into the First/Second/Third Normal form.
On startup of the wizard, user gets to select upto what normal form they want to
normalize the table structure.
Here is an example table which you can use to test all of the three First, Second and
Third Normal Form.
CREATE TABLE `VetOffice` (
`petName` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
`petBreed` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
`petType` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
`petDOB` date NOT NULL,
`ownerLastName` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
`ownerFirstName` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
`ownerPhone1` int(12) NOT NULL,
`ownerPhone2` int(12) NOT NULL,
`ownerEmail` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
);
The above table is not in First normal Form as no primary key exists. Primary key
is supposed to be (petName,`ownerLastName`,`ownerFirstName`) . If the primary key
is chosen as suggested the resultant table won’t be in Second as well as Third Normal
form as the following dependencies exists.
(OwnerLastName, OwnerFirstName) -> OwnerEmail
(OwnerLastName, OwnerFirstName) -> OwnerPhone
PetBreed -> PetType
Which says, OwnerEmail depends on OwnerLastName and OwnerFirstName.
OwnerPhone depends on OwnerLastName and OwnerFirstName.
PetType depends on PetBreed.
6.38 How can I reassign auto-incremented values?
Some users prefer their AUTO_INCREMENT values to be consecutive; this is not
always the case after row deletion.
Here are the steps to accomplish this. These are manual steps because they
involve a manual verification at one point.
Ensure that you have exclusive access to the table to rearrange
On your primary key column (i.e. id), remove the AUTO_INCREMENT setting
Delete your primary key in Structure > indexes
Create a new column future_id as primary key, AUTO_INCREMENT
Browse your table and verify that the new increments correspond to what
you’re expecting
Drop your old id column
Rename the future_id column to id
Move the new id column via Structure > Move columns
6.39 What is the “Adjust privileges” option when renaming, copying, or moving a database, table, column, or procedure?
When renaming/copying/moving a database/table/column/procedure,
MySQL does not adjust the original privileges relating to these objects
on its own. By selecting this option, phpMyAdmin will adjust the privilege
table so that users have the same privileges on the new items.
For example: A user ‘bob’@’localhost’ has a ‘SELECT’ privilege on a
column named ‘id’. Now, if this column is renamed to ‘id_new’, MySQL,
on its own, would not adjust the column privileges to the new column name.
phpMyAdmin can make this adjustment for you automatically.
Notes:
While adjusting privileges for a database, the privileges of all
database-related elements (tables, columns and procedures) are also adjusted
to the database’s new name.
Similarly, while adjusting privileges for a table, the privileges of all
the columns inside the new table are also adjusted.
While adjusting privileges, the user performing the operation must have the following
privileges:
SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE privileges on following tables:
mysql.`db`, mysql.`columns_priv`, mysql.`tables_priv`, mysql.`procs_priv`
FLUSH privilege (GLOBAL)
Thus, if you want to replicate the database/table/column/procedure as it is
while renaming/copying/moving these objects, make sure you have checked this option.
6.40 I see “Bind parameters” checkbox in the “SQL” page. How do I write parameterized SQL queries?
From version 4.5, phpMyAdmin allows users to execute parameterized queries in the “SQL” page.
Parameters should be prefixed with a colon(:) and when the “Bind parameters” checkbox is checked
these parameters will be identified and input fields for these parameters will be presented.
Values entered in these field will be substituted in the query before being executed.
6.41 I get import errors while importing the dumps exported from older MySQL versions (pre-5.7.6) into newer MySQL versions (5.7.7+), but they work fine when imported back on same older versions ?
If you get errors like #1031 - Table storage engine for ‘table_name’ doesn’t have this option
while importing the dumps exported from pre-5.7.7 MySQL servers into new MySQL server versions 5.7.7+,
it might be because ROW_FORMAT=FIXED is not supported with InnoDB tables. Moreover, the value of
innodb_strict_mode would define if this would be reported as a warning or as an error.
Since MySQL version 5.7.9, the default value for innodb_strict_mode is ON and thus would generate
an error when such a CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE statement is encountered.
There are two ways of preventing such errors while importing:
After the import is done, it is suggested that the value of innodb_strict_mode should be reset to the
original value.