How to configure phpMyAdmin to access multiple servers?

Fairly old question, but still relevant on searches.

phpMyAdmin uses plain PHP for config files, and the $cfg['Servers'] array to get the configured servers.

So the proper way is to add a new config file in /etc/phpmyadmin/conf.d for every server you want to add. It's only required to end the files name in .php to get them included, but it's a good idea to use your_new_server.inc.php for consistency.

The minimal contents for a given config file would be:

<?php // let the interpreter know this is code
$cfg['Servers'][2]['host']     = 'THE_HOST';
$cfg['Servers'][2]['user']     = 'THE_USER';
$cfg['Servers'][2]['password'] = 'THE_PASSWORD';

As stated in another answer, you can check the /usr/share/doc/phpmyadmin/examples/config.manyhosts.inc.php file for more parameters.

Important: You have to increase the index (2) of the array for every new file, and avoid using 1 if you want to keep connecting to localhost.

If the guy(s) that package(s) phpMyAdmin had thought about it, they could have added the incrementing $i variable in the foreach that includes the files from the conf.d directory, so you could just use it as the index and not worry about having to increase it manually, but sadly it's not the case. You can do it yourself though.

[2019]: Newer PHP versions allow this more succinct alternative syntax:

<?php $cfg['Servers'][] = ['host'=>'my_host', 'user'=>'my_user', 'password'=>'my_pass'];

I think this is the most accurate way to do it:

First setup the password:

sudo htpasswd -c /etc/phpmyadmin/htpasswd.setup admin

Then disable security:

sudo pma-configure

Then go to http://yourserver/phpmyadmin/setup (here the browsers ask for auth, the user is admin and the password is what you write in first command), with that wizard you configure your servers, once is done, put the security again:

sudo pma-secure

I have assumed the following:

• /etc/phpmyadmin/ would be the most logical place to add the config
• /etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php is the location for the default (local?) config. This is, because it is a default, one db only
• /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php reads the default database so it has one. At least this one is used, so you have a database. If something changes in your config, the config-db.php is changed, so 'local' changes to your file are not modified

Therefore my conclusion was that adding an extra server below this part:

/* Configure according to dbconfig-common if enabled */
if (!empty($dbname)) {
    //reading from config-db.php
}

//$i++ was allready done in if above
//Adding extra servers
 $cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'serverhost.host.tld';
 $cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysqli';
//...etc

This looks like the best place.

According to the phpMyAdmin documentation you can define multiple servers in the $cfg['Servers'] array defined in the config.inc.php file.

The main configuration file is stored in /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php. This file includes the

• Blowfish secret from /var/lib/phpmyadmin/blowfish_secret.inc.php
• Generated config from phpMyAdmin setup script (diegueus9's method) /var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
• DB values from /etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php which are generated from /etc/dbconfig-common/phpmyadmin.conf by /usr/sbin/dbconfig-generate-include. /etc/dbconfig-common/phpmyadmin.conf can be modified using dpkg-reconfigure -plow phpmyadmin
• Extra configuration files from /etc/phpmyadmin/conf.d/*.php

Some example configuration snippets are in /usr/share/doc/phpmyadmin/examples including config.manyhosts.inc.php. This file can be added to /etc/phpmyadmin/conf.d. It works by resetting the i variable back to 1 before creating any hosts so that it overrides the host set in /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php.

If you want to do a more advanced configuration, you will probably want to change the /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php file and possibly add other configuration extensions using /etc/phpmyadmin/conf.d.

To add support for additional configurations to older configuration files, you can create the directory /etc/phpmyadmin/conf.d and then add the below PHP code to the bottom of /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php:

/* Support additional configurations */
foreach (glob('/etc/phpmyadmin/conf.d/*.php') as $filename) {
        include($filename);
}