Re: [tlug] Internal Server Error with phpMyAdmin [SOLVED]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Dave M G writes:

 > Thank you for responding.
 > 
 > >  > ... and commenting out the line:
 > >  > #Options +FollowSymLinks -Indexes
 > > It's no joke.  It's a potentially serious problem. 
 > >   
 > 
 > Wait... so did I do something wrong by commenting out that line?
 > 
 > My LAMP server isn't serving out to the internet, it's just for local 
 > testing. But still... have I created a security hole?

No, it's the other way around.  PHPadmin has *closed* a hole for you
by being unwilling to start if FollowSymLinks is enabled.  Sorry, I
should have said that more clearly.  (And so should the error page
generated, but there's not much we can do about that.)

You may want to try changing the line to

Options -Indexes -FollowSymLinks

What this does is explicitly turn FollowSymLinks off, and also turns
off automatic indexing (ie, generating a directory listing for you if
the access to the directory is permitted but there is no index.html).

It doesn't actually matter, most likely, but (a) it's theoretically
possible that the default will change to +FollowSymLinks with some
future Apache upgrade, in which case PHPadmin will again mysteriously
stop working, and (b) having the explicit -FollowSymLinks documents
your intent.