For many application on Google Cloud, phpMyAdmin is only accessible via your local machine using an SSH tunnel. This is done as a security precaution, which you will find configured in the WordPress Bitnami stack on Google Cloud Platform.
In this tutorial you will learn how to use puTTY as an SSH client in order to establish a secure shell (SSH) connection between your server and your local machine. This secure connection will allow you to connect to your server’s phpMyAdmin page in order to safely make changes to your website’s database.
Before getting started with this tutorial, you should have already installed puTTY, which is the SSH client that you will be using in this tutorial. Also, you should have already launched an application on Google Cloud Platform, such as WordPress Bitnami, which will be used as the example in this tutorial.
There are 5 steps in this tutorial:
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1. Download puTTY
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2. Generate SSH Keys
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3. Configure Public Key
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4. Configure puTTY
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5. Connect to phpMyAdmin
1. Download puTTY
2. Generate SSH Keys
3. Configure Public Key
4. Configure puTTY Settings
4.1 Session settings
4.2 Auth settings
4.3 Tunnels settings
NOTE: If your domain is configured with SSL, then enter
localhost:443 as the Destination
4.4 Data settings
4.5 Session settings
5. Connect to phpMyAdmin
NOTE: If your domain is configured with SSL, then enter https://127.0.0.1:8888/phpmyadmin/ into the URL bar.
Did it work?
Now that you’ve configured the settings for both the puTTY Client and your Google Cloud VM instance, you can open the SSH tunnel at any time by clicking on the Open button on the Session page.
If you have any questions or comments, please post them below!
Thanks,
I am using an online server,can I use this tutorial?
Hi Vincent,
Yes, you can. However, with most applications you can access phpMyAdmin directly at yourwebsite.com/phpmyadmin – therefor there is no need to implement the steps outlined in this tutorial. That being said, if you’re using one of Bitnami’s stacks then you will indeed find this tutorial useful for your online server.
Let me know if you have any questions,
Joe
I am using phpmyadmin on my server,I need to connect the database with google cloud server,I don’t know the steps or how everything supposed turned to work,I have been stuck for 2 weeks and I cant find any clear tutorial on exactly on what to do…
Hi Vincent,
Which application are you running? WordPress?
If so, I would avoid using Bitnami’s stacks and instead use Click-to-deploy stacks because they are easier to configure. Using Click-to-deploy will allow you to access phpMyAdmin directly from your website’s url (yourwebsite.com/phpmyadmin).
Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions,
Joe
Its just a normal website with an online database and I need to connect the database with google cloup plartform.
Hi Vincent,
This tutorial is not related to what you are trying to accomplish, and I don’t have any tutorials on the subject.
Your database credentials are stored in a configuration file, which will be different depending on the application stack that you’re running.
This Magento tutorial gives an overview of the general process (for Magento specifically), but like I said, the steps will be different depending on your application stack.
Good luck and I hope this information helps,
Joe
Thanks! All went great!
however now am phpmyadmin, what’s the user name and password supposed to be ?
Hi Bob,
Your username and password credentials for phpMyAdmin are created when you first launch the instance. You can view them from your Google Cloud dashboard by clicking the hamburger menu in the upper-left hand corner of the screen and navigating to Cloud Launcher > Your Solutions and then selecting your deployment.
Let me know if you have any questions,
Joe
Just wanted to thank you for all the work you have put into this site. I am in the process of building and launching my business website using Bitnami WordPress on the gcp and I have you to thank for getting me this far. You have the single best, most complete start to finish walkthrough for someone like me that knew absolutely nothing at the start of this endeavor. Whenever I googled how to do something your site came up again and again, with exactly what I needed, presented in a way that is easily understood. I eventually just pinned your site in my browser to save time. My site is up, working correctly with the correct domain, my theme is installed and my dummy data is plugged in. I’m all set to customize the site and input my own content. You deserve an awesomeness award for sure!
Thanks so much for the positive feedback Crystal – I love hearing stories from people who were successful in migrating their websites to the cloud.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever have any questions or comments related to any of the tutorials! 🙂
Talk to you soon,
Joe
Thanks for this great tutorial!!
though at first it stressed me out because whenever I access local:8888/phpmyadmin I always redirected to home page of the actual site. and all the tips in the comment section didn’t worked for me. I use SSL on my site by the way.
But I finally can now access phpmyadmin by excluding phpmyadmin from force always HTTPS.
and then I can access phpmyadmin with port 80, while my site still always HTTPS.
Awesome – sounds like a great workaround! Thanks for sharing the details!
Dear Leron,
Thank you for the great tutorial, it helps me a lot.
However, i would like to ask 1 question that i want to upload my themes / plugins through Filezilla, and where should i locate the themes / plugins file?
thanks
Hi Tse,
I’m glad the tutorial helped you!
For the Bitnami stack, the directory is located at /apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-content
For Click-to-Deploy, the directory is located at /var/www/html/wp-content
Let me know if you have any questions,
Joe
I have configured the install (Bitnami WP) to use a URL instead of the IP, and have the free SSL enabled (your tutorials – great resource!!!), and when I try to tunnel in, it redirects to the URL, not 127.0.0.1. Any advice on getting that redirect to be avoided?
Hi Geoff,
I’m not sure how to get that working. You’re not the first person to complain of that issue, but I’m also not sure how they got it resolved.
My advice would be to check StackOverflow and try contacting Bitnami support to see if they can help since the issue seems to be unique to their WordPress stack.
Please let me know if you find the solution.
Thanks,
Joe
Found it – if you set up the connection in Terminal using ssh -N -L 8888:127.0.0.1:443 -i ~/.ssh/wherever/keyfile name@[my ip address] then connect to https://127.0.0.1:8888/phpmyadmin/ it seems to be able to bypass the IP redirect.
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for finding this solution – I know a lot of users will find it helpful!
Best regards,
Joe
Hiya again, 😉
I was determined to set up my PHPAdmin… Followed your steps but still got access error. But eventually managed between your tutorial AND bitnami’s …
—————Kept getting this WARNING MESSAGE——————
“Your connection is not private
Attackers might be trying to steal your information from 127.0.0.1 (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards). Learn more
NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID”
————————————————
>> Clicked on the ‘Not Secure’ on —-Chrome browser—- and read ‘Certificate Invalid’ ???
…but test on https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ passed with ‘A’ level ???
Talk about being confused huh!? HeLp 😉
>> Clicked on the ‘Learn more’ in —-WARNING MESSAGE—-
Long story short, it said my site was not secure but I could still click on… ‘Proceed to 127.0.0.1 (unsafe)’ and voila’ got to unsecure https://127.0.0.1:8888/phpmyadmin/
Next step >> Login
Now not sure but, I could’ve used the ‘mysql -u root -p’ command for this to have worked a couple months back… as seen at ‘How To Connect To The MySQL Database?’
https://docs.bitnami.com/google/apps/wordpress/#how-to-force-https-redirection
PROBLEM: Login to PHPAdmin ‘bitnami’ username was not accepted,
FIXES: As per instruction on VIDEO link below – username ‘root’ and ‘password inside my VM instance’ was accepted.
https://docs.bitnami.com/google/apps/wordpress/#accessing-phpmyadmin-on-windows
————————————————-
I have a question though, with regards to:
This server could not prove that it is 127.0.0.1; its security certificate is from mysite .com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration or an attacker intercepting your connection. Proceed to 127.0.0.1 (unsafe)
Is there anything I should be worried about or is there any alternative fixes for this?
Thank you again 😉
Hi Isabel,
Just choose the option for “trust anyway” – it will not pose a security issue.
This is because you are accessing your website’s back-end through localhost, so there is no third party validating the authenticity of the certificate.
Thank you Leron, understood and at easy … 😉
Thank you for the great tutorial Leron. I would like to adapt this solution for those who connect to phpmyadmin on macOS or Linux. Once you have the keys Just open terminal and
If you are not using SSL use following code:
ssh -N -L 8888:127.0.0.1:80 -i [paste path to key file .pem] bitnami@[paste your ip address.]
and go to http://127.0.0.1:8888/phpmyadmin/
If you are using SSL use following code:
ssh -N -L 8888:127.0.0.1:443 -i [paste path to key file .pem] bitnami@[paste your ip address.]
and go to https://127.0.0.1:8888/phpmyadmin/
Hi Dev,
Thanks so much for sharing this!
A lot of people have been asking about how to adapt this tutorial for Mac, so I will point them to your comment!
Talk to you soon,
Joe
Hello Dev,
I have tried this but doesn’t work; nothing happens after I get prompted to enter my passphrase as follows:
Enter passphrase for key ‘/home/benjaminwaller/.ssh/google_compute_engine’:
It enters to the next line and just sits there!
I thought it might have been because I had the firewall check on in my GCP instance but I turned it off and still can’t connect!
I used this the following command without the ‘.pem’ because I got an “No such file or directory.
Permission denied (publickey). error when adding that.
ssh -N -L 8888:127.0.0.1:443 -i ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine benjaminwaller@[my ip address.]
The permissions is set to the highest at 775.
Can anyone suggest someone I’m missing?
Best regards,
Ben
UPDATE: I figured this out.
I needed to create the SSH tunnel after doing gcloud auth login. I was SSH’ing into my vm with this command (gcloud compute ssh moodle-1-vm –zone australia-southeast1-a) and then trying to SSH to my machine while connected via SSH. I found out after sharing a screenshot of my terminal commands on the Bitnami Community forum https://community.bitnami.com/
Just wanted to share my issue and solution for others with little experience like me.
Best regards,
Ben
Awesome! Thanks for sharing the update Ben! 🙂
Hi Leron
here how I fixed:
L8888 localhost:443 or L8888 127.0.0.1:443 instead of L8888 127.0.0.1:80
and then
https://127.0.0.1:8888 instead of http://127.0.0.1:8888
and all is working.
Thank you for your very helpful work!
Best regards
Hi Georgi,
Thanks for posting this! 😀
These are very great tips for people configuring SSH tunnels with SSL configured!
Talk to you soon,
Joe
Did this tutorial work for you?
Please share your questions and comments below! 😀