How to Manually Upgrade phpMyAdmin

On Ubuntu 18.04 and other Linux distros there is a compatibility issues with PHP 7.2 and phpMyAdmin 4.6 and above. The solution is to manually upgrade phpMyAdmin downloading and installing the latest version.

Preserve your current phpMyAdmin folder by renaming it

sudo mv /usr/share/phpmyadmin/ /usr/share/phpmyadmin.bak

Create a new phpMyAdmin folder

sudo mkdir /usr/share/phpmyadmin/

Move to new directory

cd /usr/share/phpmyadmin/

Download and Extract phpMyAdmin from phpMyAdmin download page and look for the .tar.gz URL and download it using wget. In this guide we are using version 4.9.2, released December 2019. If a later version is now available, make sure to change the commands below to match

sudo wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/4.9.2/phpMyAdmin-4.9.2-all-languages.tar.gz

Extract files from download

sudo tar xzf phpMyAdmin-4.9.2-all-languages.tar.gz

Once extracted, list folder

ls

You should see a new folder phpMyAdmin-4.9.2-all-languages

Move the contents of this folder to /usr/share/phpmyadmin

sudo mv phpMyAdmin-4.9.2-all-languages/* /usr/share/phpmyadmin

Now you can log back into phpMyAdmin and check the current version.

You may see two errors:

If you are seeing an error The $cfg[‘TempDir’] (./tmp/) is not accessible. phpMyAdmin is not able to cache templates and will be slow because of this.

Open vendor_config.php

sudo nano /usr/share/phpmyadmin/libraries/vendor_config.php

Press CTRL + W and search for TEMP_DIR

Change line  to

define('TEMP_DIR', '/var/lib/phpmyadmin/tmp/');

You may also see an error The configuration file now needs a secret passphrase (blowfish_secret). The blowfish secret is used by phpMyAdmin for cookie authentication. 

Press CTRL + W and search for CONFIG_DIR

Change line to

define('CONFIG_DIR', '/etc/phpmyadmin/');

phpMyAdmin will now generate its own blowfish secret based on the install directory.

Save file and exit. (Press CTRL + X, press Y and then press ENTER)

Now log back in to phpMyAdmin and ensure the errors are gone.

You can now delete the tar.gz file and the empty folder.

sudo rm /usr/share/phpmyadmin/phpMyAdmin-4.9.2-all-languages.tar.gz

sudo rm -rf /usr/share/phpmyadmin/phpMyAdmin-4.9.2-all-languages

And if you’re certain your new phpMyAdmin install is working correctly you can delete the backup folder.

sudo rm -rf /usr/share/phpmyadmin.bak

That’s all about manually upgrade phpMyAdmin