So you got yourself a LAMP webserver and started hosting some sites on it. Now, for easy access to your databases, you opt to chose phpMyAdmin.

When installing phpMyAdmin on a Debian system via the synaptic manager (apt-get install phpmyadmin), the installation will be done in this folder

/usr/share/phpmyadmin

You will be able to access your phpMyAdmin via

http://www.mydomain.com/phpmyadmin

You will notice that you are asked for a username and password. This is great! It means that your database is protected…. but what if i want to protect it even more?
What if i would like to add some extra folder protection by using the good old .htpasswd technique?

Well, I looked around for a while but did not find any satisfying solutions. This meant I had to mess around a bit myself and after not too long, success! I had a phpMyAdmin installation where it would first use the .htpasswd protection before bringing me to the phpMyAdmin login page.

How did we do this?

1) create a .htpasswd file in the installation directory (cfr. supra). You can use handy .htpasswd generators like this one: http://www.htaccesstools.com/htpasswd-generator/

2) find and edit the phpMyAdmin apache2 config file:

/etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

3) add the necessary lines in the conf file to tell Apache2 it should use the .htpasswd file. Below you will find the before and after of the code.

Before:

# phpMyAdmin default Apache configuration
 
Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
 
		AllowOverride All
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
		DirectoryIndex index.php
 
		# Authorize for setup

After:

# phpMyAdmin default Apache configuration
 
Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
 
        AllowOverride All
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        DirectoryIndex index.php
 
        AuthType Basic
        AuthName "HaLe MySQL"
        AuthUserFile /usr/share/phpmyadmin/.htpasswd
        Require valid-user
 
        # Authorize for setup

4) reload your Apache2

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

5) your phpMyAdmin is now .htpasswd protected!

Cheers
Lajfi