Re: Minor Mystery - phpmyadmin and mysql.user
On Tue, 2 Sep 2025 08:10:28 -0500
Kent West <westk@acu.edu> wrote:
> On 9/1/25 11:33 AM, Joe wrote:
> > On Mon, 1 Sep 2025 07:04:17 -0500
> > Kent West <westk@acu.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm just toying around, learning a lot, with Apache2, phpmyadmin,
> >> mariadb, SQL in general ... absolutely don't know what I'm doing.
> >>
> >> But I've gotten some basics accomplished; I've created a 'pma' user
> >> in mariadb to tinker with mariadb, and have gotten ppmyadmin to
> >> open in Firefox and show my databases, and have discovered that I
> >> can see who my users in mariadb are with a SQL command like
> >> 'SELECT user FROM mysql.user;'.
> >>
> >> I wanted to browse the navigation tree in the left-hand pane of the
> >> phpmyadmin web page, to see if I could directly see the users in
> >> the mysql.user table (understanding that "mysql.user" is a "path"
> >> to the "mysql" database, and the "user" table within that db).
> >>
> >> But the "user" table is not there. I spent considerable time last
> >> night and this morning with two AIs (Gemini, and duck.ai) trying to
> >> make this table visible (the AI's insist the table is there, but
> >> simply not visible for some reason), but nothing they suggested
> >> made the table visible in the navigation tree, although the data
> >> in that table is accessible via SQL (either through the phpmyadmin
> >> GUI, or the mariadb cli client, or the mycli client). (The AIs
> >> also insist I should not manipulate the user table directly, which
> >> is why it's hidden, but I'm not worried about manipulating that
> >> data; I just want to see the table there instead of just accepting
> >> that it's there; besides, if I hork up my
> >> mariadb/Apache2/phpmyadmin setup, nothing is lost; this is a
> >> throw-away setup for my learning.) The AIs seem to think this is
> >> Debian-specific behavior.
> >>
> >> Why can't I see this table in the navigation tree, and how do I
> >> force the system to let me see it there?
> >>
> > The first question is: what user are you?
>
>
> I created a user, "pma", who has "ALL PRIVILEGES", who I am logged
> into in phpmyadmin. As mentioned, he can query the "user" table, and
> he can see it with a SQL "SHOW TABLES;" command in the SQL "Show
> Query box"; he just can't see it from within the phpmyadmin GUI
> navigation tree.
>
>
OK, in my phpmyadmin tree I'm seeing 30 tables in the mysql database,
including user. This still looks like privileges at the moment.
When you view any table in database mysql and enter:
select * from `user`
in the phpmyadmin SQL box, are the privileges for root and pma
identical? Are both shown with Host as localhost? The User names and
password hashes should be different, but nothing else.
--
Joe
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