my random thoughts

I've recently setup an Ubuntu server that uses suPHP.  I wanted to also use phpMyAdmin but found that there were some issues with getting it to work with phpMyAdmin.  I found some work arounds while Googleing but nothing definitive.  So this is how I did it.

The first problem I ran across was that suPHP would not allow phpMyAdmin to run because Ubuntu installs it into /usr/share/phpmyadmin rather than the default web document root /var/www.  So suPHP would return the error " File "/usr/share/phpmyadmin/index.php" is not in document root of Vhost "/var/www."  Some got around this by simply installing phpMyAdmin manually in /var/www but I'd rather let Ubuntu handle it.  (suPHP would not allow symlinks either).

The easiest way to get around this would be to tell suPHP to ignore that security restriction by editing /etc/suphp/suphp.conf and change

;Check wheter script is within DOCUMENT_ROOT
check_vhost_docroot=true

to

;Check wheter script is within DOCUMENT_ROOT
check_vhost_docroot=false

But that screamed "SECURITY BREACH" to me so that was not an option. 

So, what I did was make phpMyAdmin its own virtual host. 

Edit Apache's phpMyAdmin config file:

sudo pico /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

At the beginning of this file add:

<VirtualHost *:80> 

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost 
DocumentRoot /usr/share/phpmyadmin

At the end of the file, add

</VirtualHost>

Save by holding down the Control key and hit the o key.  Then ctrl-x to exit.

Then, tell suPHP that /usr/share/phpmyadmin is okay:

sudo pico /etc/apache2/mods-available/suphp.conf

Add the following  before "</IfModule>":

<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin>

               suPHP_Engine on

</Directory>

And in /etc/suphp/suphp.conf, add phpmyadmin's directory to an allowed docroot:

;Path all scripts have to be in

docroot=/var/www:${HOME}/public_html:/usr/share/phpmyadmin

Now, after browsing to http://mysite.com/phpmyadmin, I got a 500 Internal Error message.  Searching the logs, I found this message:

UID of script "/usr/share/phpmyadmin/index.php" is smaller than min_uid

Two issues.  One is that the Ubuntu's phpMyAdmin install is owned by root.  Easy fix:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /usr/share/phpmyadmin

But, still get the same error.  So the second reason is that suPHP is configured to have a minimum UID of 100.  www-data's UID is 33.  So, edit suPHP's config to change the minimum to 33.

sudo pico /etc/suphp/suphp.conf

Change:

; Minimum UID
min_uid=100

; Minimum GID
min_gid=100

to:

; Minimum UID
min_uid=33

; Minimum GID
min_gid=33

Make sure you change the min_gid as well or else suPHP will still reject phpMyAdmin.  I guess this could be a potential security issue as well but less of a one than letting web scripts have free rein outside their designated directories.

Now we have suPHP and phpMyAdmin working together!