The CentOS 7 official software repositories have PHP 5.4 which has reached the end of life and no longer actively maintained by the developers.
To keep up with the latest features and security updates, you need a newer (probably the latest) version of PHP on your CentOS 7 system.
For the purpose of this guide, we will be operating the system as root, if that is not the case for you, make use of the sudo command to acquire root privileges.
Installing PHP 7 on CentOS 7
1. To install PHP 7, you have to install and enable EPEL and Remi repository on your CentOS 7 system with the commands below.
# yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm # yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
2. Next, you need to install yum-utils, a collection of useful programs for managing yum repositories and packages. It has tools that basically extend yum’s default features.
It can be used for managing (enabling or disabling) yum repositories as well as packages without any manual configuration and so much more.
# yum install yum-utils
3. One of the programs provided by yum-utils is yum-config-manager, which you can use to enable Remi repository as the default repository for installing different PHP versions as shown.
# yum-config-manager --enable remi-php70 [Install PHP 7.0]
If you want to install PHP 7.1, PHP 7.2 or PHP 7.3 on CentOS 7, just enable it as shown.
# yum-config-manager --enable remi-php71 [Install PHP 7.1] # yum-config-manager --enable remi-php72 [Install PHP 7.2] # yum-config-manager --enable remi-php73 [Install PHP 7.3]
4. Now install PHP 7 with all necessary modules with the command below.
# yum install php php-mcrypt php-cli php-gd php-curl php-mysql php-ldap php-zip php-fileinfo
Afterwards, double check the installed version of PHP on your system.
# php -v
Lastly, below is a list of useful PHP articles that you can read for additional information:
- How to Use and Execute PHP Codes in Linux Command Line
- How to Find MySQL, PHP and Apache Configuration Files
- How to Test PHP MySQL Database Connection Using Script
- How to Run PHP Script as Normal User with Cron
In this article, we have explained how to install PHP 7 on CentOS 7 Linux. You can send us any questions or additional thoughts via the feedback form below.
Hi,
Thank you so much for your great article.
I’m installing two PHP version 5.6 and 7, but when I enter
php -v, it seems it only show 5.6. How can I use both of them?@Vince
You can only view one PHP version on the command line, which is the default version. But you can run different sites using different PHP versions, which requires some configurations.
Thank you so much it works perfectly ~ ^^
@Astarte
Welcome, do not forget to share it.
Thank you very much
@Muhammed
Welcome, thanks for the feedback.
I have a question, I did this on my VPS to work with php 7.1 for laravel. After everything went good, all my wordpress websites got an 502 gateway error. I immediately got the backup restored and got my sites back, but now the PHP version is back to the old 5.6.3 which is to low for my laravel thing.
Is there any solution?
@Roy
Install the latest version of WordPress that supports PHP 7.1 or higher.
How to drop php 5.4?
@sonia
You can run following command to remove PHP completely.
Then install the PHP version you want to use.
Many thanks
@Yanni
Welcome, thanks for the feedback.
thank you so much
@Bao
Your are most welcome, many thanks for the feedback.
Thank you for your guides.
You may want to clarify that this guide is for CentOS 7 without any PHP installed, and not an upgrade from PHP 5.4. Unfortunately, this article didn’t work for me, as I have CentOS 7.4.1708 with PHP 5.4.16 already installed.
@Olin
Many thanks for the heads up, we will cross check and possibly update the article as you have suggested.
Thanks so much..
@Kirill
Welcome, many thanks for the comments.
what about php-fpm ? to configure with nginx ?
@yodle
You can follow this guide: https://www.tecmint.com/run-multiple-websites-with-different-php-versions-in-nginx/