Call to undefined function __() error - phpMyAdmin

Question

When i want run phpMyAdmin on my browser, that show me this error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function __() in /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/libraries/core.lib.p         


        

Answer 1

In my case this error was intermittent and I'd had phpMyAdmin installed and running fine for years. Reading the answers here, it seemed the error might have something to do with the sessions.

On Ubuntu 16.04 the PHP sessions are in:/var/lib/php/sessions and look like:

$ sudo ls -al /var/lib/php/sessions/
total 128
drwx-wx-wt 2 root     root     73728 Mar  4 14:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root     root      4096 Mar  8  2017 ..
-rw------- 1 www-data www-data    67 Mar  4 14:05 sess_dvg6vo1k1s1c0353rjk09g9vu1
-rw------- 1 www-data www-data    67 Mar  4 13:49 sess_e4ha0gl4f7gukku1o2uc4h5rs2
-rw------- 1 www-data www-data    67 Mar  4 14:05 sess_qhbve6k4a7svu6pk0lk568jgt0
-rw------- 1 www-data www-data    67 Mar  4 13:49 sess_sh48e898i7ad14oidsph08in10
-rw------- 1 www-data www-data 30044 Mar  4 14:04 sess_uvumc2341dvtfikl27kpile46pmfbon1

(That last one in the listing looked "funny" to me.)

I first tried restarting apache2 but the sessions apparently survive that. So I just deleted them. (Don't know of another way to clear them.) Upon refreshing the browser, the phpMyAdmin login displayed and everything is working as expected.