PHP is not working well on Ubuntu 13.10 and mcrypt is missing in phpmyadmin

Try this for your mcrypt problem:

mv -i /etc/php5/conf.d/mcrypt.ini /etc/php5/mods-available/
sudo php5enmod mcrypt
sudo service apache2 restart

It's a bug with the location of the mcrypt.ini file, I got the info from here.

I had the same bug, I did a cp instead of a mv to be sure but it solved the problem.

For PHP not working, if you get phpmyadmin working (even with the mcrypt error), it means PHP is working (because phpmyadmin uses PHP). But in your example <? echo $row['details']; ?> change <? to <?php and try again?

For the second problem about, lots of PHP lines are printed in textbox's like: echo $row['details'];

Edit your php.ini config file (for apache):

sudo nano -w /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

and change:

short_open_tag = Off

to:

short_open_tag = On