I managed to find a PPA with php5.6 but when installed phpmyadmin from normal ubuntu packages, everything seemed to be fine until i visited 0.0.0.0/phpmyadmin. It said:
The mbstring extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration.
Even tho I have uncommented it and restarted apache2, I still got this error which got me thinking which php.ini was phpmyadmin loading it from? Probably from a PHP 7.1 install that I don't even have so I want to ask how do I install phpmyadmin for PHP 5.6 in ubuntu 16.04 where PHP 5.6 doesn't apear in official packages anymore.
NOTE This is a fresh install of ubuntu-server 16.04.1 LTS using PPA of PHP 5.6
list of php installed packages:
root@*****:~# apt list --installed | grep php
WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.
libapache2-mod-php5.6/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed]
php-common/xenial,xenial,now 1:49+deb.sury.org~xenial+4 all [installed,automatic]
php-phpseclib/xenial,xenial,now 2.0.1-1build1 all [installed,automatic]
php5.6/xenial,xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 all [installed]
php5.6-cli/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed]
php5.6-common/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
php5.6-json/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
php5.6-mbstring/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed]
php5.6-mcrypt/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed]
php5.6-mysql/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed]
php5.6-opcache/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
php5.6-readline/xenial,now 5.6.29-1+deb.sury.org~xenial+1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
phpmyadmin/xenial-updates,xenial-updates,now 4:4.5.4.1-2ubuntu2 all [installed]