How to fix phpmyadmin error: "Connection for controluser as defined in your configuration failed"

"Connection for controluser as defined in your configuration failed" It's one of those small, annoying messages that appear out of the way on your screen, but still catches your eye once in a while especially when you're deep in thought about how to building a multi-join query in the SQL tab of phpmyadmin.

Well, it annoyed me today so much that I finally decided to do something about it and finally take a look. I opened up the PHPMyAdmin config file located at /etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php on Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat. There's a default username and password in $dbuser and $dbpass

Fix "Connection for controluser as defined in your configuration failed" in PHPMyAdmin on Ubuntu.