How to Upgrade php 7.2 to php 7.4 on Ubuntu 18.04 (nginx)

Hello, @quirkymalcom

The first important thing to know is that you won’t be actually upgrading the PHP version but installing the newest one as well.

You’ll need to add the proper repositories

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update

Next depending on your WebService - Nginx/Apache you have different steps.

Let’s start with the Nginx requirements:

sudo apt install php7.4-fpm

To check this afterwards run

php-fpm7.4 -v

Now that you have the PHP version, you’ll need to install some extensions. You can do it like so

sudo apt install php7.34-extension_name

The most common extensions can be installed with the following command

sudo apt install php7.4-common php7.4-mysql php7.4-xml php7.4-xmlrpc php7.4-curl php7.4-gd php7.4-imagick php7.4-cli php7.4-dev php7.4-imap php7.4-mbstring php7.4-opcache php7.4-soap php7.4-zip php7.4-intl -y

Now you should have PHP 7.4 installed. You need to also restart Nginx in order to apply the changes.

Run the configuration test

nginx -t

Restart the web server

sudo service nginx restart

Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex