Cannot login to phpMyAdmin, no errors shown - mysql

Question

I have MySQL set up correctly on my linux computer, however I want a better way to input data into the database besides terminal. For this reason, I downloaded phpMyAdmin. However, when I try to log in to the phpMyAdmin from index.php, it doesnt do anything. It seems to just refresh the page without doing anything. I am putting in the correct MySQL username and password. What is the issue?
Here is a screen shot of what it shows after I click "go".

Answer 1

This is a possible issue when the path to save php_session is not correctly set :
The directory for storing session does not exists or php do not have sufficient rights to write to it.
To define the php_session directory simply add the following line to the php.ini :
session.save_path="/tmp/php_session/"
And give write rights to the http server.
usually, the http server run as user daemon in group daemon. If it is the case, the following commands will make it :
chown -R :daemon /tmp/php_session
chmod -R g+wr /tmp/php_session
service httpd restart

Answer 2

Login fails if session folder in not writeable. To check that, create a PHP file in your web directory with:
<?php
$sessionPath = 'undefined';
if (!($sessionPath = ini_get('session.save_path'))) {
$sessionPath = isset($_ENV['TMP']) ? $_ENV['TMP'] : sys_get_temp_dir();
}
if (!is_writeable($sessionPath)) {
echo 'Session directory "'. $sessionPath . '"" is not writeable';
} else {
echo 'Session directory: "' . $sessionPath . '" is writeable';
}
If session folder is not writeable do either
sudo setfacl -R -m u:www-data:rwx <session directory> or chmod 777 sudo setfacl -R -m u:www-data:rwx <session directory>
-

Answer 3

I am late to the game, but on Amazon linux AMI I could not log in to phpmyadmin ... it just kept refreshing the login screen with no errors.
I have fixed with below command
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/lib/php/session

Answer 4

I fixed my issue on CentOS 7 with MariaDB and phpmyadmin I downloaded from offical phpmyadmin site by adding
session.save_path = "/var/lib/php/session"
to /etc/php.ini
and
chown -R :lighttpd /var/lib/php/session
I also restarted php-fpm and lighttpd after

Answer 5

In my case the solution was to set an Apache setting properly:
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath
This was required, because ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse were in use, but cookie paths are not changed automatically.
It'd be great if PHPMyAdmin had shown something like session not found or anything, when password is sent with POST.

Answer 6

Do you have a .htaccess file in one of the parent directories that strips off index.php from the url by doing a 301 redirect?
301 redirects discard the form data and redirect you as if you didn't submit anything. So you get returned to the login page.
So you should create a local .htaccess file in the phpmyadmin directory with a single line RewriteEngine On. This will overwrite the previous rewrite rule to nothing.
You may need to clear the browser cache as Chrome aggressively caches 301 redirects.

Answer 7

In my case the hard drive was full.
Use df -h to check the space left on your hard drive, and if you want you can free some space by using the command sudo apt-get clean, which removes installation files.
I hope this will help some future users.

Answer 8

I ran these commands and it worked for me:
sudo service httpd restart
sudo service mysqld stop
sudo service mysqld start

Answer 9

Try searching the web for installation or setup guides for phpMyAdmin. Look at two or three of these and make sure you have covered all the required steps. (If you have already done so, please include which guides you have followed it in the question).
See if it helps to edit config.inc.php (acecoder mentioned this as well).
Check if this guide is of any help.
Which distro are you on? Try searching for the name of the distro you are using together with "phpMyAdmin guide" or "phpMyAdmin setup howto".
If you encounter errors along the way, post the error text here, if it's short (or paste via a pastebin-like site if it's long).

Answer 10

Are you sure that mysql is running? I had the same issue after doing a database import and filling up the volume containing the mysql database. After changing various permissions and clearing sessions, I tried to restart mysql (/etc/init.d/mysql restart) and it failed because the volume was full. After increasing /var and starting mysql successfully, I was able to log into phpmyadmin just fine.

Answer 11

If you have an error like:
Host 'host_name' is blocked because of many connection errors.
Login in your mysql as root and run the flush hosts command
1.- mysql -u root -p
2.- mysql > flush hosts
After this I was able to login again in phpmyadmin

Answer 12

phpMyAdmin will show errors when login fails. If it doesn't, it means that your setup has an error.
The most likely place to check is your php.ini settings. Since there doesn't seem to be an official list of phpMyAdmin-compatible settings, it's mostly trial and error.
Make sure you have enabled the stuff that needs to be enabled. Also check that you did not enable uncommon php.ini settings (like enable_post_data_reading = Off) because phpMyAdmin assumes them to be "the usual ones".
To ease debugging, start with a clean default php.ini file then tweak them line by line to see which setting is causing the error. (Don't forget that you need to restart your server after changing the php.ini file for the changes to take place.)

Answer 13

In my case it was due to an old Apache session.
Stop Apache, clear all pending sessions in your sessions.save_path directory (example: /var/lib/php/session) and restart Apache.

Answer 14

Make sure to set a 32 chars long random key in 'config.inc.php' in the $cfg['blowfish_secret'] value. That solved it for me.

Answer 15

Didn't realize I need to restart MariaDB after modifying config.inc.php:
service mariadb restart
Otherwise at least in my case changes didn't come affect. Also make sure your php session directory is writable by webserver (typically session.save_path = "/var/lib/php/session")