problem with phpMyAdmin advanced features

Question

Hi all, I am having trouble putting the final touches on my MySQL/Apache/phpMyAdmin install on a Windows XP system. I am trying to get rid of all the error message in phpMyAdmin and I have gotten rid of all of them except the ones related to "advanced features." The exact error message I have is :

The additional features for working with linked tables have been deactivated. To find out why click here.

I have read up on the cause of the errors but I must be missing something because I still cannot get the warning to go away. Here is what I have done:

Created a linked-tables infrastructure (default name "phpmyadmin") per the phpMyAdmin instructions and enabled "pmadb" in my "config.inc.php" file.

Specified (enabled) the table names in my "config.inc.php" file (there are 9 tables total).

Created a "controluser" and granted only Select privilages per phpMyAdmin instructions

Adjusted "controluser" pma and "controlpass" pmapass in "config.inc.php" file

From what I can see these are all the instruction phpMyAdmin gives on this subject, and I am unable to locate any tutorials on the specifics of "advanced features" in phpMyAdmin.

Any help would be appreciated, and be gentle, this is my first go with MySQL/phpMyAdmin

And if there is some bit of info you need to help me please let me know what it is and I'll get it for you.

EDIT: 4/30/2010

In an attempt to make this easier I uninstalled everything (Apache, PHP, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin) in just installed WAMP. I was hoping the automatic configuration provided by WAMP would take care of my issue, but I have the EXACT SAME PROBLEM! This warning is pissing me off and this is becoming a matter of pride!

EDIT: 5/14/2010

Thank you all for your suggestions, but I found the answer to my question was to use XAMPP instead of WAMP. In under 5 minutes I had XAMPP up and running with NO ERRORS of any kind. The XAMPP user interface is much better too. I would suggest XAMPP to anyone frustrated with WAMP.

Answer 1

The solution is already at serverfault.com/#answer-66712.

Answer 2

Possibly the issue is the privileges for the account - my local setup grants all privileges to the user/controluser.

Here's what part of my config.inc.php looks like:

/* Authentication type */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'config';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']          = 'USER';      // MySQL user
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']      = 'PASSWORD';          // MySQL password (only needed
                                                    // with 'config' auth_type)

/* Server parameters */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = 'tcp';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress'] = false;
/* Select mysqli if your server has it */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysql';
/* User for advanced features */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] = 'USER';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] = 'PASSWORD';
/* Advanced phpMyAdmin features */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] = 'phpmyadmin';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['bookmarktable'] = 'pma_bookmark';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['relation'] = 'pma_relation';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_info'] = 'pma_table_info';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_coords'] = 'pma_table_coords';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['pdf_pages'] = 'pma_pdf_pages';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['column_info'] = 'pma_column_info';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['history'] = 'pma_history';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['designer_coords'] = 'pma_designer_coords';

and the relevant part of the privileges reported by phpmyadmin:

User        Host        Type        Privileges      Grant   Action
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
USER        %           global      ALL PRIVILEGES  Yes     Edit Privileges
USER        localhost   global      ALL PRIVILEGES  Yes     Edit Privileges

This may not be the most secure setup, but this is for an internal development machine (where I, too, got fed up with the warning message). I note that one of the solutions proposed to the Debian version was to give the pma user nearly all privileges, not just SELECT.

Obviously I've substituted USER and PASSWORD for my own user and password.

Answer 3

The relevant section of the PMA code is PMA__getRelationsParam in libraries/relation.lib.php. Apart from confirming the existence of the 8 tables it checks to see whether the pma_column_info table has rows with mimetype, transformation and transformation_options. The PHPMyAdmin manual has further information on how to set up that table. Alternatively, you can set PmaNoRelation_DisableWarning if you don't need the feature and just want to do away with the warning.

Edit: you can debug the source to find the exact problem. Add

var_dump(compact('mime_field_mimetype', 'mime_field_transformation', 'mime_field_transformation_options'));
var_dump($cfgRelation); 
die;

to the end of the PMA__getRelationsParam function, just before the return statement, then load PMA and see which one of the checks is false.

Answer 4

Thank you all for your suggestions, but I found the answer to my question was to use XAMPP instead of WAMP. In under 5 minutes I had XAMPP up and running with NO ERRORS of any kind. The XAMPP user interface is much better too. I would suggest XAMPP to anyone frustrated with WAMP.