phpMyAdmin don't have permission to read file

I want to create a secure connection between PHP and MySQL database. In order to do this, I need to store the DB infos in a separated file, with -r-------- permission (readonly for owner). But doing like this, PHP seems impossible to open the file, making impossible the connection. What do I have to do? Do I have to run phpMyAdmin as root? EDIT: This is the result of the ls -l command. Thank you for help.

-none
-r-----r-- 1 root root 56 Jul 10 13:01 db.ini