Accessing phpMyAdmin returns php as text

Hi all,

After following the instructions on http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-debian-wheezy-apache2-bind-dovecot-ispconfig-3-p4 "The Perfect Server - Debian Wheezy (Apache2, BIND, Dovecot, ISPConfig 3)", with the difference that I installed PHP5.5 and did not include mod_php5 and mod_suphp (instead installing both mod_fcgid and mod_fastcgi with PHP-FPM) I ran into the weirdest thing.

I was able to connect to ISPConfig3 via the usual *:8080 port and succesfully created several sites (setting them to use PHP-FPM)... so far so good... But when I want to connect to phpMyAdmin via *:8081/phpmyadmin, I get to see the index.php content as text instead of a rendered interface like expected.

What's weird is that when leaving out :8081 (so straight to */phpmyadmin I get the phpMyAdmin interface. Plus, I tried a phpinfo.php test file in the /var/www/apps dir and accessing that with *:8081/phpinfo.php it gets rendered just fine.

Can anybody enlighten me on what is going on / wrong ? And will this mean the ISPConfig Monitoring App will not work on my server ?

 

Hi Till, thanks for your reply

But like I described, phpmyadmin does work on the server without mod_php5. It seems to be using FPM/FastCGI when accessed via port 80 on /phpmyadmin and it works just perfect there... It's only on port 8081 that it returns plain text instead of passing PHP to CGI like it is supposed to ... Well, as far as I guess because the phpinfo.php via port 8081 reports "Server API : CGI/FastCGI"

If phpmyadmin cannot run on CGI/FastCGI then any requests should at least cause a PHP or internal server error instead of Apache simply responding with a text dump of the index.php file content.

Or am I wrong?

 

UDATE:

Till, you did put me on the right track!

To make phpmyadmin work with CGI/FastCGI there are some changes to the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/apps.vhost needed:

What was:

Code:

  <IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/apps
    SuexecUserGroup ispapps ispapps
    <Directory /var/www/apps>
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews +ExecCGI
      AllowOverride AuthConfig Indexes Limit Options FileInfo
      AddHandler fcgid-script .php
      FCGIWrapper /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/apps/.php-fcgi-starter .php
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
    </Directory>
  </IfModule>

Should become:

Code:

  <IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/apps
    SuexecUserGroup ispapps ispapps
    <Directory /var/www/apps>
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews +ExecCGI
      AllowOverride AuthConfig Indexes Limit Options FileInfo
      AddHandler fcgid-script .php
      FCGIWrapper /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/apps/.php-fcgi-starter .php
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
    </Directory>
    <Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin>
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews +ExecCGI
      AllowOverride AuthConfig Indexes Limit Options FileInfo
      AddHandler fcgid-script .php
      FCGIWrapper /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/apps/.php-fcgi-starter .php
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
    </Directory>
  </IfModule>

Notice how the first part stays unaltered while the added <Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin>...</Directory> part contains an exact copy of the directive above it...

After restarting Apache, it now seems to work

I wonder why phpmyadmin works without hesitation in PHP-FPM while this extra work is needed for PHP-CGI. Anyway, thanks again!

 

UPDATE 2:

A similar modification to the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/ispconfig.vhost (adding a <Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin> directive holding a copy of the one above) will make phpmyadmin links from within the ISPConfig admin panel work too

 

UPDATE 2.b:

I suppose adding

Code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}:8080%{REQUEST_URI}

to the /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf file (just below <Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin>) should improve security... Of course, this uses the main ISPConfig admin panel certificate so might cause a warning message for users that come in via another (their own vhost) domain. I suppose replacing %{HTTP_HOST} with the servers qualified domain would solve that.

Or is this a bad approach?

 

Oh... but by default, the phpmyadmin link from inside the ISPConfig panel uses port 8080. Why's that?

 

Because the phpmaydmin link is /phpmyadmin. So it's on the same host as ispconfig itself, which is on port 8080.

 

Yeah, obviously... But why is the default setting "/phpmyadmin" if it is not wise to have that?

Anyway, I modified that setting to "https://[SERVERNAME]/phpmyadmin/" and that works fine now. Funny though that modifying it to hold any url parameters like "https://[SERVERNAME]/phpmyadmin/?db=[DATABASENAME]" (which is a suggested placeholder) will result in an error...