How To Install PHP 7.4 / 7.3 On CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

PHP is an open-source programming language widely for web development, created by Rasmus Lerdorf. It is an HTML-embedded scripting language for creating dynamic web sites.

CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 comes with PHP v7.2 by default.

In this post, we will see how to install PHP 7.4 / 7.3 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8.

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Add Remi Repository

Contents

1 Add Remi Repository
2 Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8
3 Install PHP 7.3 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8
4 Check PHP Version
5 Install PHP-FPM
6 Install PHP Extensions
7 Conclusion

Remi, a third-party repository which offers multiple versions of PHP (7.4 / 7.3 / 7.2) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Remi repository requires EPEL repository be enabled on your system.

rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

To enable the Remi repository on your system, install the Remi repository auto-configuration package using the below command.

dnf install -y https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

Output:

CentOS-8 - AppStream 1.7 MB/s | 6.3 MB 00:03 CentOS-8 - Base 3.0 MB/s | 7.9 MB 00:02 CentOS-8 - Extras 5.5 kB/s | 2.1 kB 00:00 CentOS-8 - PowerTools 916 kB/s | 1.8 MB 00:02 Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64 1.9 MB/s | 5.2 MB 00:02 Google Cloud SDK 6.6 MB/s | 29 MB 00:04 Google Compute Engine 1.7 kB/s | 5.8 kB 00:03 remi-release-8.rpm 13 kB/s | 20 kB 00:01 Dependencies resolved.
=================================================================================================================== Package Arch Version Repository Size
===================================================================================================================
Installing: remi-release noarch 8.0-4.el8.remi @commandline 20 k Transaction Summary
===================================================================================================================
Install 1 Package Total size: 20 k
Installed size: 14 k
Downloading Packages:
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction Preparing : 1/1 Installing : remi-release-8.0-4.el8.remi.noarch 1/1 Verifying : remi-release-8.0-4.el8.remi.noarch 1/1 Installed: remi-release-8.0-4.el8.remi.noarch Complete!

List the available PHP module stream.

dnf module list php

You should see below output.

CentOS-8 - AppStream
Name Stream Profiles Summary php 7.2 [d] common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language Remi's Modular repository for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64
Name Stream Profiles Summary php remi-7.2 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language php remi-7.3 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language php remi-7.4 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language Hint: [d]efault, [e]nabled, [x]disabled, [i]nstalled

Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

Enable php:remi-7.4 module to install PHP 7.4.

dnf module enable php:remi-7.4 -y

Output

Last metadata expiration check: 0:03:03 ago on Sat 11 Jan 2020 02:41:27 PM UTC.
Dependencies resolved.
=================================================================================================================== Package Arch Version Repository Size
===================================================================================================================
Enabling module streams: httpd 2.4 php remi-7.4 Transaction Summary
=================================================================================================================== Complete! Switching module streams does not alter installed packages (see 'module enable' in dnf(8) for details)

Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 with dnf command.

dnf install -y php php-cli php-common

Install PHP 7.3 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

Enable php:remi-7.3 module to install PHP 7.3.

dnf module enable php:remi-7.3 -y

Output:

Last metadata expiration check: 0:03:03 ago on Sat 11 Jan 2020 02:41:27 PM UTC.
Dependencies resolved.
=================================================================================================================== Package Arch Version Repository Size
===================================================================================================================
Enabling module streams: httpd 2.4 nginx 1.14 php remi-7.3 Transaction Summary
=================================================================================================================== Complete! Switching module streams does not alter installed packages (see 'module enable' in dnf(8) for details)

Install PHP 7.3 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 with dnf command.

dnf install -y php php-cli php-common

Check PHP Version

Once you have installed PHP, check the PHP version with the following command.

php -v

Output:

PHP 7.4.1 (cli) (built: Dec 17 2019 16:35:58) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies with Zend OPcache v7.4.1, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

Install PHP-FPM

If you are setting up LEMP stack on RHEL 8, you might want to install php-fpm.

dnf install -y php-fpm

Install PHP Extensions

PHP extensions are compiled libraries which enables specific support for your code.

To have MySQL support on your code, you can install php-mysqlnd package.

dnf install -y php-mysqlnd

Once you have installed MySQL extension, you can use the below command to verify it.

php -m | grep -i mysql

Output:

mysqli
mysqlnd
pdo_mysql

PHP Extensions for WordPress

The following extensions are required to install and run WordPress on your RHEL 8 machine. WordPress recommends PHP v7.3 for the installation.

dnf install -y php-dom php-simplexml php-ssh2 php-xml php-xmlreader php-curl php-date php-exif php-filter php-ftp php-gd php-hash php-iconv php-json php-libxml php-pecl-imagick php-mbstring php-mysqlnd php-openssl php-pcre php-posix php-sockets php-spl php-tokenizer php-zlib

PHP Extensions for Joomla

The following extensions are required to install and run Joomla on your RHEL 8 machine. Joomla requires PHP v7.1 and above.

dnf install -y php-mysqlnd php-zlib php-xml php-pear php-json php-mcrypt php-pecl-imagick

PHP Extensions for Drupal

The following extensions are required to install and run Joomla on your RHEL 8 machine. Drupal requires PHP v7.1 and above.

dnf install -y php-mysqlnd php-date php-dom php-filter php-gd php-hash php-json php-pcre php-pdo php-session php-simplexml php-spl php-tokenizer php-xml