Upgrading PHP to 5.5.9

There is an open-source project I want to install on my server, Grav, but it requires PHP 5.5.9. I currently have PHP 5.4.16 installed on a CentOS 7 server running on NGINX. Actually, it is PHP-FPM. So my question is what is the easiest and cleanest way to achieve this?

I have read many articles online regarding this and each one seems to have a different approach such as uninstalling the current version of PHP and reinstalling from scratch.

Solution

In order to get a more modern version of PHP you need to use an alternative repo. There are a few out there to choose from, that have traditionally packaged up a newer version of LAMP stack components, like Remi, but for the Centos7 vagrant I'm currently using, I went with webtatic.

You should simply follow the instructions for setting up the alternative repo with yum. Currently that involves:

rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

Once installed do a yum search php and you'll find php versions 5.5, 5.6, 7.0 and 7.1 to choose from.

Instead of yum install php you're going to do something like yum install php56w.

For example on my VM, this is what I have for php:

[vagrant@localhost:~]$ rpm -qa | grep php
php56w-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-process-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-opcache-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-xml-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-pear-1.10.4-1.w7.noarch
php56w-common-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-cli-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-mbstring-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-pdo-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-mysqlnd-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-fpm-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64
php56w-gd-5.6.31-1.w7.x86_64

You will need to uninstall your current php version, so this is an involved operation, and you want to have done a dry run, and be confident that you know what you're doing.

As for confidence that something won't break, with Vagrant/Virtualbox/Docker etc., there is no excuse for not testing this out in a VM first.

Not to mention that these are foundation tech for state of the art development these days.

Here's a quick and simple Vagrantfile for a vanilla Centos7 box you can have up and running (assuming you get Vagrant installed and working).

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

# All Vagrant configuration is done below. The "2" in Vagrant.configure
# configures the configuration version (we support older styles for
# backwards compatibility). Please don't change it unless you know what
# you're doing.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # The most common configuration options are documented and commented below.
  # For a complete reference, please see the online documentation at
  # https://docs.vagrantup.com.

  # Every Vagrant development environment requires a box. You can search for
  # boxes at https://atlas.hashicorp.com/search.
  config.vm.box = "centos/7"

  # Disable automatic box update checking. If you disable this, then
  # boxes will only be checked for updates when the user runs
  # `vagrant box outdated`. This is not recommended.
  # config.vm.box_check_update = false

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine. In the example below,
  # accessing "localhost:8080" will access port 80 on the guest machine.
  # NOTE: This will enable public access to the opened port
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 8080, host: 8080
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 80
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 3306, host: 3306

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine and only allow access
  # via 127.0.0.1 to disable public access
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"

  # Create a private network, which allows host-only access to the machine
  # using a specific IP.
  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.20.20"

  # Create a public network, which generally matched to bridged network.
  # Bridged networks make the machine appear as another physical device on
  # your network.
  # config.vm.network "public_network"

  # Share an additional folder to the guest VM. The first argument is
  # the path on the host to the actual folder. The second argument is
  # the path on the guest to mount the folder. And the optional third
  # argument is a set of non-required options.
  config.vm.synced_folder "./data", "/vagrant_data"

  # Provider-specific configuration so you can fine-tune various
  # backing providers for Vagrant. These expose provider-specific options.
  # Example for VirtualBox:
  #
  # config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
  #   # Display the VirtualBox GUI when booting the machine
  #   vb.gui = true
  #
  #   # Customize the amount of memory on the VM:
  #   vb.memory = "1024"
  # end
  #
  # View the documentation for the provider you are using for more
  # information on available options.

  # Define a Vagrant Push strategy for pushing to Atlas. Other push strategies
  # such as FTP and Heroku are also available. See the documentation at
  # https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/push/atlas.html for more information.
  # config.push.define "atlas" do |push|
  #   push.app = "YOUR_ATLAS_USERNAME/YOUR_APPLICATION_NAME"
  # end

  # Enable provisioning with a shell script. Additional provisioners such as
  # Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt, and Docker are also available. Please see the
  # documentation for more information about their specific syntax and use.
  # config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
  #   apt-get update
  #   apt-get install -y apache2
  # SHELL
end