Dependency issue trying to install php-mbstring on ec2

Question

I am trying to install yii2 on my Amazon Linux AMI instance, it requires the php-mbstring extension to work.

When I tried to run sudo yum install php-mbstring it returned this error:

Error: php56-common conflicts with php-common-5.3.29-1.8.amzn1.x86_64

Loaded plugins: priorities, update-motd, upgrade-helper
amzn-main/latest                                         | 2.1 kB     00:00
amzn-updates/latest                                      | 2.3 kB     00:00
2494 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package php-mbstring.x86_64 0:5.3.29-1.8.amzn1 will be installed
--> Processing Dependency: php-common(x86-64) = 5.3.29-1.8.amzn1 for package: php-mbstring-5.3.29-1.8.amzn1.x86_64
--> Running transaction check
---> Package php-common.x86_64 0:5.3.29-1.8.amzn1 will be installed
--> Processing Conflict: php56-common-5.6.9-1.112.amzn1.x86_64 conflicts php-common < 5.5.22-1.98
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: php56-common conflicts with php-common-5.3.29-1.8.amzn1.x86_64
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

Thanks for your time in advance

Answer 1

It seems you have php 5.6 installed.
You need to install mbstring for that particular version of php.

Run sudo yum install php56-mbstring

After that it might be a good idea to restart apache (thanks! @hexicle),
using sudo service httpd restart