I just discovered that in the file
/etc/dbconfig-common/phpmyadmin.conf
My database admin password is written in clear-text with no encryption.
How can I change that? I noticed online that many people are happy with this. Although I noticed that only root can see the content of this file (its permission is 600), I still would prefer not having clear passwords.
What do you suggest?
If you require any additional information, please ask.
If you are just looking for a solution for phpmyadmin, you could change it to cookie based authentication. then create .htaccess file with db username and password where pasword is stored in encrypted password file. on first call of page you will have to login once with user and password and then a cookie is stored locally so on next call you are straight in again.
procedure also described here (but for windows): http://robsnotebook.com/xampp-builtin-security
about creating htaccess user: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/htpasswd.html