No matter which operating system you're running, once PHP is
installed and the MySQL server is in operation, the very first
thing you need to do is assign a "root password" for MySQL. MySQL
only lets authorized users view and manipulate the information
stored in its databases, so you'll need to tell MySQL who is an
authorized user, and who isn't. When MySQL is first installed,
it's configured with a user named "root" who has access to do
pretty much any task without even entering a password. Your first
task should be to assign a password to the root user so that
unauthorized users can't mess around in your databases.
It's important to realize that MySQL, just like a Web server or
an FTP server, can be accessed from any computer on the same
network. If you're working on a computer connected to the
Internet that means anyone in the world could try to connect to
your MySQL server! The need to pick a hard-to-guess password
should be immediately obvious!
To set a root password for MySQL, type the following command in
the bin directory of your MySQL installation (include the
quotes):
mysqladmin -u root password "your new password"
To make sure MySQL has registered this change, you should tell it
to reload its list of authorized users and passwords:
msqladmin -u root reload
If this command returns an error message to tell you that access
was denied, don't worry: this just means the password has already
taken effect.
To try out your new password, request that the MySQL server tell
you its current status:
mysqladmin -u root -p status
Enter your password when prompted. You should see a brief message
that provides information about the server and its current
status. The "-u root" argument tells the program that you want to
be identified as the MySQL user called "root". The "-p" argument
tells the program to prompt you for your password before it tries
to connect. The "status" argument just tells it that you're
interested in viewing the system status.
If at any time you want to shut down the MySQL server, you can
use the command below. Notice the usage of the same "-u root" and
"-p" arguments as before:
mysqladmin -u root -p shutdown
With your MySQL database system safe from intrusion, all that's
left is to configure PHP. To do this, we'll use a text file
called php.ini. If you installed PHP under Windows,
you should already have copied php.ini into your
Windows directory. If you installed PHP under Linux using the
instructions above, you should already have copied
php.ini into the PHP lib folder
(/usr/local/php/lib), or wherever you chose to put
it.
Open php.ini in your favorite text editor and have a
glance through it. Most of the settings are pretty well
explained, and most of the default settings are just fine for our
purposes. Just check to make sure that your settings match these:
register_globals = On
magic_quotes_gpc = On
doc_root = the document root folder of your Web server
extension_dir = the PHP extension directory
Save the changes to php.ini, and then restart your
Web server. To restart Apache under Linux, log in as root and
type this command:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart
You're done! Now you just need to test to make sure everything's
working okay.
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