Question

How to upgrade the PHP version on my Nginx Ubuntu Droplet

I’ve been going over the community questions and I’ve noticed one constant theme. Every now and then a question regarding the upgrade of a PHP version appears.

As such I’ve decided to create this question so it can be easily found and it’s universal, at least for Ubuntu-based droplets using Nginx.

Show comments

Submit an answer


This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Sign In or Sign Up to Answer

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

KFSys
Site Moderator
Site Moderator badge
January 25, 2021
Accepted Answer

The first thing I want to mention is, you can’t directly upgrade a PHP version from let’s say 7.1 to 7.4. Having said that you can install a new one and start using it.

Firstly, to be able to install a certain PHP version, in this case, 742 you’ll need to add a certain repository to your system

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Update the repository index.

sudo apt update

Install PHP 7.4 with the below command.

sudo apt install -y php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-common php7.4-fpm

To install extensions run

sudo apt install -y php7.4-mysql php7.4-dom php7.4-simplexml php7.4-ssh2 php7.4-xml php7.4-xmlreader php7.4-curl  php7.4-exif  php7.4-ftp php7.4-gd  php7.4-iconv php7.4-imagick php7.4-json  php7.4-mbstring php7.4-posix php7.4-sockets php7.4-tokenizer

The above is the required extensions for a WordPress installation that’s why I’m posting them. Having said that it’s good to have these extensions as well.

sudo apt install -y php7.4-mysqli php7.4-pdo  php7.4-sqlite3 php7.4-ctype php7.4-fileinfo php7.4-zip php7.4-exif

That’s it, you now have your new PHP version installed.

Now we need to make it a default for your Droplet and Application.

sudo nano /etc/php/7.4/fpm/php.ini

Find: cgi.fix_pathinfo. Remove semi-colon and set 0

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Save the file, exit, and execute

sudo systemctl restart php7.4-fpm

Next configure Nginx to use the new PHP we installed

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Find the block

location ~ \.php$ {
....
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock; ---- Remove this line by commenting '#'

fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
}

Save the file, exit, and execute

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

You can now test php by using phpinfo() function or use php -v command into the terminal.

Try DigitalOcean for free

Click below to sign up and get $200 of credit to try our products over 60 days!

Sign up

Get our biweekly newsletter

Sign up for Infrastructure as a Newsletter.

Hollie's Hub for Good

Working on improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth? We'd like to help.

Become a contributor

Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.

Welcome to the developer cloud

DigitalOcean makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Learn more
DigitalOcean Cloud Control Panel