PHP MYSQL changing password

[Anon]

Hello,

I not sure how to handle this situation.
Its a bit of read ,

I have website running PHP and MYSQL.
The database is called CollectDb

Visitors to the website sign up for newsletters and buy products.
For these users I have a user defined in the mysql.users database table with a anonymous password .
Eg.
User webuser Password webuser
This webuser has privileges to INSERT, SELECT on some tables on my CollectDb database.

So when they access pages on the site, they use the webuser username/password for any database functions.

I understand the above is correct way to handle web users?

Ok, now I have an administration section of the website.

Only the administrator is permitted to perform certain functions on the database.

So for this I added another user to the mysql.users database table.
CollectAdmin with a real password.

Now when I first create the CollectDb database, it adds a table AdminUsers and places
The Admin and MD5 of the password in this table.

Ok, so when the Admin logs in, first I connect to mysql using the Admin username /password.
Then open the CollectDb and test it again against the CollectDb.AdminUsers table. To verify its an admin for the database.

Now this works well until I need to handle a Change Password for the Admin.
I dont have access the mysql.users table. As noted in Chapter 6 of the mysql manual its not a good idea to do this.

But I need to be able to change the admin password from a webpage.
Any suggestions welcome.

Perhaps I have complicated the design by having a separate user for connecting to the database for administrive functions.
But the admin users has alot more rights to tables in my database.

Regards
Bob

[[deleted]]

"I understand the above is correct way to handle web users?"

You should indeed have a seperate username and password to use for the scripts that are accessed by your visitors, and another username and password to use with your administrative pages. But, the usernames and passwords that you use to access the database should not be the same username and password that users use to logon to your website.

"I dont have access the mysql.users table. As noted in Chapter 6 of the mysql manual its not a good idea to do this."

web interfaces should never be able to change database-passwords, only data inside the database.

The passwords used to create the database connections should be hidden in a PHP include file, and they don't have to be changed. The only password you should change is the password used to logon to your website, the md5 hash in the table you created.

[Anon]

so the include file should have both the vistor and admin passwords for connecting to the database

and then the database will have an MD5 hash of the password that the admin will actually use to login with

thanks for your previous answer Vincent

[[deleted]]

ideally you'd have two include files, one for the users and one for the admin.
The user scripts read the user-data and connect to the database as users.

The admin scripts read the admin data and logon to the datbaase as admin.

It's the database-data that controls who can logon to the website through md5-hashes of the web-passwords.

[Anon]

ok.. I was thinking in terms of controlling whats parts of the database are accessable without regard to the website controlling the access to the data.

thanks for clearing it up.

Regards
Bob