How to Install/Update PHP to 7.4 on CentOS 7

Recently while looking onto my client’s WordPress dashboard, found a notification that the PHP version might be vulnerable and needs an update as shown below for security reasons. I’m running PHP 7.0 on CentOS 7 which was installed using Remi repo. Here is the step-by-step guide to update PHP to the 7.4 version.

Step 1: First and foremost, get the complete backup of your server and the website before proceeding further.

Step 2: Update your server

# yum install epel-release yum-utils -y
# yum update -y

Step 3: Check the version of the PHP that is currently running.

# php -v

Step 4: List all the PHP packages you have installed into a file, so you can refer to it to install all those packages in PHP 7.4

# rpm -qa | grep php > php_rpm.txt

Step 5: Remove all the installed PHP packages

# yum remove "php*" -y

Step 6: Install the updated Remi repository if it is not already installed.

# yum install -y http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

Step 7: Enable the PHP 7.4 repository, install the core and required PHP packages. You can also refer to step 4 for the previously required packages.

# yum --enablerepo=remi-php74 install php php-pdo php-fpm php-gd php-mbstring php-mysql php-curl php-mcrypt php-json -y

Step 8: Check the updated PHP version.

# php -v
PHP 7.4.24 (cli) (built: Sep 21 2021 11:23:11) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies

Step 9: Restart Apache to use the newly installed PHP 7.4

# systemctl restart httpd