$cfg['Servers'][$i]['users'] ... not OK - configuration

Question

I recently upgraded from phpMyAdmin 3.5.3 to 4.1.4 and I'm having problems with some of the configuration storage settings. At least, it seems that I'm having problems. Maybe this is expected behavior but I want to be sure.
My Procedure:
Downloaded and extracted new phpMyAdmin and copied it to /srv/www/htdocs/ (The previous version is still there but uses a different directory name - I didn't want to remove it until I got the new version working)
Used the setup web GUI to create a new config.inc.php. I know that it says to copy the old one but I figured there might be new fields since this is a new major version. Also, when I was done, I verified that the old config.inc.php and the new one have the same values for identical fields. I then copied it to the phpMyAdmin root.
Ran examples/create_tables.sql and noticed that it did create some new tables in the phpmyadmin database.
Logged in successfully and most features seem to be working fine.
Here's what I'm not sure about. It gave me the message: "The phpMyAdmin configuration storage is not completely configured, some extended features have been deactivated. To find out why click here." And when I click there it has the following complaints:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['users'] ... not OK [ Documentation ]
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['usergroups'] ... not OK [ Documentation ]
Configurable menus: Disabled
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['navigationhiding'] ... not OK [ Documentation ]
Hide/show navigation items: Disabled
I figured it was because there were not yet any entries for those in config.inc.php but even when I enter those lines with blank values into config.inc.php, I still get the same messages.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but to me "not OK" indicates some kind of an error, not just that the value is being intentionally left blank. Is that correct? Did I miss something? Or is that phpMyAdmin's way of saying that it's not currently in use but that I have nothing to worry about?
All the other configuration storage features are marked as "OK" and "Enabled" - it's just these new ones (which weren't in 3.5.3) that are "not OK."
Is something wrong or is this the way it should be if I don't want to use those features?

Answer 1

You can:
Check a similar question PhpMyAdmin error with config file to see if any of those answers help.
Leave them blank to make phpMyAdmin use the default values.
e.g. $cfg['Servers'][$i]['usergroups '] = '';
http://wiki.phpmyadmin.net/pma/Config/Servers#usergroups
You can also manually look into phpmyadmin database to see in which table relevent data is stored

Answer 2

I ran into similar problem when trying to install a fresh copy of phpMyAdmin 4.1.13. It's because of the table name mapping issue.
Below the line:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'password';
this is the code I ended up putting:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] = 'phpmyadmin';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['bookmarktable'] = 'pma__bookmark';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['relation'] = 'pma__relation';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_info'] = 'pma__table_info';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_coords'] = 'pma__table_coords';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['pdf_pages'] = 'pma__pdf_pages';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['column_info'] = 'pma__column_info';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['history'] = 'pma__history';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['tracking'] = 'pma__tracking';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['designer_coords'] = 'pma__designer_coords';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['userconfig'] = 'pma__userconfig';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['recent'] = 'pma__recent';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_uiprefs'] = 'pma__table_uiprefs';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['users'] = 'pma__users';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['usergroups'] = 'pma__usergroups';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['navigationhiding'] = 'pma__navigationhiding';

Answer 3

Just upgraded to version 4.2.7 on my localhost. Found these steps at the button of the page linked from "The phpMyAdmin configuration storage has been deactivated. To find out why click here."
Quick steps to setup advanced features:
Create the needed tables with the examples/create_tables.sql.
Create a pma user and give access to these tables.
Enable advanced features in configuration file (config.inc.php), for example by starting from config.sample.inc.php.
Re-login to phpMyAdmin to load the updated configuration file.
Still had the problem but i added the following to my config.inc.php file
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['users'] = 'pma__users';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['usergroups'] = 'pma__usergroups';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['navigationhiding'] = 'pma__navigationhiding';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['savedsearches'] = 'pma__savedsearches';
Re-login and check. It should work fine.
For me, re-logging in was changing the value of $cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] from 'config' to 'cookie' and then closing the browser.