I have a server with ServInt, which runs WebHost Manager (WHM) and cPanel.  I logged into phpMyAdmin and it said I was running MySQL 4 instead of 5.  Wanting to upgrade to MySQL 5, I went into WHM and used cPanel->Upgrade to Latest Version and Software->Update Server Software.  This updated everything just fine and it said I was running MySQL 5 (and doing “SELECT VERSION()” returned 5), even though phpMyAdmin still did not report v5.

I assumed the fact that I was running a very old version of phpMyAdmin was the problem.  Since I couldn’t find anyway to automatically upgrade phpMyAdmin in WHM/cPanel, I did the following, which tries to use your existing phpMyAdmin config file:

# wget -O /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin-3.1.2-all-languages.tar.gz http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/phpmyadmin/phpMyAdmin-3.1.2-all-languages.tar.gz
# tar xzf /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin-3.1.2-all-languages.tar.gz -C /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/
# cd /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/
# rm -f phpMyAdmin-3.1.2-all-languages.tar.gz
# cp -R phpMyAdmin phpMyAdmin-backup
# cp phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php phpMyAdmin-3.1.2-all-languages/config.inc.php
# mv phpMyAdmin phpMyAdmin-old
# mv phpMyAdmin-3.1.2-all-languages phpMyAdmin

And then I got an error in phpMyAdmin, and seeing nothing significant in my old config file, did this to use the sample that comes with the new version:

# rm phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php
# cp phpMyAdmin/config.sample.inc.php phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php

Then phpMyAdmin worked just fine, and the new version differentiates between Server version (which was now correct) and PHP Client version (which didn’t sound right).  I checked phpinfo() and the PHP MySQL client version was 5, but I read that I would have to recompile PHP.  I took the opportunity to upgrade from Apache 1 to 2 and to the latest release of PHP 5, all done using EasyApache under WHM->Softare.

With PHP upgraded and recompiled, I then went ahead and launched phpMyAdmin again.  It still gives the warning, “Your PHP MySQL library version 4.1.22 differs from your MySQL server version 5.0.67. This may cause unpredictable behavior.”, which is what I was trying to get rid of, but now I give up.  I know my MySQL client and server versions are both 5, so if anyone knows how to fix that warning let me know.

Let me know if you know why phpMyAdmin gives this warning.

PS, I also did this:

#vi phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php

and added a random string under blowfish_secret.