Can't log in. Access Denied on phpMyAdmin

[sysmin]

I’m trying to troubleshoot someone’s HestiaCP install, and their missing phpMyAdmin panel, which gives me an Access Denied error. They have a working WordPresss site, and HestiaCP logs in just fine. Reinstalling isn’t truly an option here.

Going through the databases at Hestia’s panel > user > website.com > DB > phpMyAdmin’s yellow icon shows “Access Denied. You do not have permission to view this page. Please check your credentials and try again.”

I’m stuck on what could be done, but so far, tried changing permissions like:

chown -R root:www-data /etc/phpmyadmin/
chown -R hestiamail:www-data /usr/share/phpmyadmin/tmp/

[bestperson]

Hi, such an error phpMyAdmin-Error

Existing configuration file (/etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php) is not readable.?
If so, you should change your permissions config.inc.php this is an old bug that is in no hurry to fix

[sysmin]

I tried making a dummy site for HestiaCP, installing from scratch, and it gives me another error, not found (it doesn’t install by default after installing WordPress?). This is more of a personal note for today, permissions are set as:

drwxr-xr-x  3 root hestiamail 4096 .
drwxr-xr-x 88 root root 4096 ..
drwxr-x---  2 root hestiamail 4096 conf.d
-rw-r-----  1 root hestiamail 980 config.inc.php

Executing chmod -R 755 ./

drwxr-xr-x  3 root hestiamail 4096 .
drwxr-xr-x 88 root root 4096 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root hestiamail 4096 conf.d
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root hestiamail  980 config.inc.php

[sysmin]

Update, I finally found a way to make it work. Turns out there were 2 different problems going on.

1. Installing by hand instead of using a script. Dummy install was used along a pipe and the tee command, which got me what commands HestiaCP automatizes in a sitting.
2. After ironing out the install part, error 404 turned into a very basic permission issue. Fixed it with:

chmod -R 755 /etc/phpmyadmin/
chown -R root:www-data /etc/phpmyadmin/
chown -R hestiamail:www-data /usr/share/phpmyadmin/tmp/