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Zombay
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Zombay

Upgrading Ubuntu to PHP 5.6.4

January 7, 2015 104.2k views

My Ubuntu ownCloud 7.0.4 on 14.04 server is currently running PHP 5.5.9 and I am looking to upgrade to 5.6.4.
Are there any simple ways to upgrade ?

Thanks, Zombay.

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4 Answers
YouthKiAwaaz January 7, 2015

I might be missing something here, but I would just use apt-get install php5 to upgrade to the latest version.

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asb MOD January 7, 2015

To upgrade to a newer version of PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 14.04, you can use Ondřej Surý's PPA. He is one of the Debian maintainers of the php5 package. To add the PPA and upgrade your packages, run:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5-5.6
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install php5

Though remember to be careful when doing an upgrade of PHP outside of the normal distro repositories, some of the additional modules that you might rely on could be missing for that version. I generally recommend that you shouldn't do such a major upgrade unless you specifically need a new feature from the newer release. Remember that Ubuntu backports security patches to their "Long Term Support" releases. So if your concern is making sure you have the most recent security fixes, simply updating your packages as normal should provide them.

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  • Zombay January 7, 2015

    Yes apparently my PHP version is vulnerable. I have all other packages updated, so I wouldn't be vulnerable ?
    http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-74/product_id-128/PHP-PHP.html

  • asb MOD January 7, 2015

    @Zombay As of right now, the version of PHP included in Ubuntu 14.04 is 5.5.9+dfsg-1ubuntu4.5 This has quite a few security patches backported to it. Notice the "distro" version appended to the "upstream" PHP version number. You can see the full changelog for this version showing what patches are applied here:

    http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/p/php5/php5_5.5.9+dfsg-1ubuntu4.5/changelog

  • Zombay January 7, 2015

    So you don't think it would be necessary to upgrade my PHP version ? I'm running an ownCloud server.

  • ryanpq MOD January 7, 2015

    You should be ok as long as you keep your version up to date with the latest security update provided by Ubuntu. In many cases a distribution will backport security updates for a package rather than forcing an update to a completely new version.

  • Zombay January 7, 2015

    Okay. Then I won't update my PHP version. How likely is it that PHP 5.5.9 will be included in the next Ubuntu release ?

  • sobriberjaya September 7, 2016

    I have try this method on my VPS Ubuntu 14.04 using VestaCP. Its working fine.

    I can see 16 php module will be upgraded and 3 new php module will be installed. Before this my php version is 5.5.9 and there is total 20 php module on 5.5.9 version. Maybe around 4 module is not upgraded.

    I have to upgrade my php to 5.6 since any Wordpress version starting from 4.6 required php 5.6.x. Its a must for Wordpress user.

sobriberjaya September 7, 2016
[deleted]
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gepard May 21, 2017

The right way: Check 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install php5.6 php5.6-mcrypt php5.6-mbstring php5.6-curl php5.6-cli php5.6-mysql php5.6-gd php5.6-intl php5.6-xsl php5.6-zip
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  • ericwimsatt June 7, 2017

    after that, you may need to:

    sudo a2dismod php5
sudo a2enmod php5.6
sudo service apache2 restart
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