If the Apache user is different from the default www-data, phpmyadmin cannot import SQL scripts because only www-data has write permission on the upload_tmp_dir configured in /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf (which is /var/lib/phpmyadmin/tmp by default).
This could be solved by either:
- making /var/lib/phpmyadmin/tmp world-writable during install
- making /var/lib/phpmyadmin/tmp writable by the apache user at the time of install
- not specifying a custom upload_tmp_dir, so that it falls back to the default /tmp or whatever apache-writable directory has been configured as upload_tmp_dir for PHP. In that case, that default directory should be added to the open_basedir directories in /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf during install.
IMO, it's quite common to change the default apache user (from www-data to the current user, for example), especially for web developers (it releaves the pain of setting write permissions on web-app folders during development).
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: phpmyadmin 4:3.4.10.1-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-27.43-generic 3.2.21
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-27-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu12
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Aug 31 11:00:30 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
TERM=xterm
PATH=(custom, no user)
LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: phpmyadmin
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
mtime.conffile..etc.phpmyadmin.config.inc.php: 2012-07-11T11:29:54.857390
It is Debian Policy that www-data is the Apache user and packages may rely on that. You're of course free to change it, but it's up to you to change other paths owned by www-data aswell (a simple find command will do that for you).
'Detecting' what the Apache user is in every package that ships a web app seems error-prone. Setting the dir world-writable is obviously not desirable.