My web server was running PHP version 5.3 for a long time and now I would like to en-cash the advantages of PHP 7.0. So I decided to upgrade PHP 5.3 to PHP 7.0. As this is a production web server, I don’t want to disturb the existing setup and also, I don’t want to have multiple versions on PHP installed. So it should be a pure upgrade of PHP.
Make sure your MySQL DB connections are adhering to the standards supported in PHP 7.0. For e.g., The MySQL original API has been deprecated in PHP 7. So mysql_connect() should be replaced with mysqli_connect() and so on.
Here is a quick guide to help you upgrade default PHP provided on Fedora, CentOS, RHEL to latest version 7.0 (at the time of writing this article).
The upgrade may fail due to already installed extensions that may not be compatible with PHP 7. Check for the PHP extensions and versions compatible with PHP 7.0 from here. If the extensions are not mandatory, you can either remove them before upgrade or else, be patient.
Step 1: How to configure Remi repository in CentOS/Fedora/RHEL
On Fedora, standard repositories are enough, whereas on RHEL/CentOS, the EPEL repository must be configured and on RHEL the optional channel must be enabled.
RHEL 6.7
wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm wget http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm rpm -Uvh remi-release-6.rpm epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm rhn-channel --add --channel=rhel-$(uname -i)-server-optional-6
RHEL 7.2
wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm wget http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm rpm -Uvh remi-release-7.rpm epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms
Centos 6.7
wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm wget http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm rpm -Uvh remi-release-6.rpm epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm
CentOS 7.2
wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm wget http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm rpm -Uvh remi-release-7.rpm epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
Fedora 23
wget http://rpms.remirepo.net/fedora/remi-release-23.rpm dnf install remi-release-23.rpm
Step 2: Activate Remi repository
By default, Remi-safe repository would be enabled and remi-php70 would be disabled. If you want to enable it permanently, open the file /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo and change the value of enabled from 0 to 1 under remi-php70 section.
vim /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo
or by using the below yum command:
RHEL et CentOS
yum-config-manager --enable remi-php70
If you don’t have yum-utils installed, then you will get an error “yum-config-manager command not found”. Click here to fix this error.
Fedora
dnf config-manager --set-enabled remi-php70
Step 3: Upgrade PHP 5.3 to PHP 7.0
yum update
That’s all 🙂
Step 4: Verify the PHP version
You may verify PHP version using the below command:
php --version PHP 7.0.24 (cli) (built: Sep 26 2017 18:04:56) ( NTS ) Copyright (c) 1997-2017 The PHP Group Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies
Thanks, it worked for me.