By Brennen Bearnes and Brennen Bearnes
Introduction
PHP 7, which was released on December 3, 2015, promises substantial speed improvements over previous versions of the language, along with new features like scalar type hinting. This guide explains how to quickly upgrade an Apache or Nginx web server running PHP 5.x (any release) to PHP 7.
Warning: As with most major-version language releases, it’s best to wait a little while before switching to PHP 7 in production. In the meanwhile, it’s a good time to test your applications for compatibility with the new release, perform benchmarks, and familiarize yourself with new language features.
If you’re running any services or applications with active users, it is safest to first test this process in a staging environment.
Prerequisites
This guide assumes that you are running PHP 5.x on an Ubuntu 14.04 machine, using either mod_php in conjunction with Apache, or PHP-FPM in conjunction with Nginx. It also assumes that you have a non-root user configured with sudo privileges for administrative tasks.
Adding a PPA for PHP 7.0 Packages
A Personal Package Archive, or PPA, is an Apt repository hosted on Launchpad. PPAs allow third-party developers to build and distribute packages for Ubuntu outside of the official channels. They’re often useful sources of beta software, modified builds, and backports to older releases of the operating system.
Ondřej Surý maintains the PHP packages for Debian, and offers a PPA for PHP 7.0 on Ubuntu. Before doing anything else, log in to your system, and add Ondřej’s PPA to the system’s Apt sources:
You’ll see a description of the PPA, followed by a prompt to continue. Press Enter to proceed.
Note: If your system’s locale is set to anything other than UTF-8, adding the PPA may fail due to a bug handling characters in the author’s name. As a workaround, you can install language-pack-en-base to make sure that locales are generated, and override system-wide locale settings while adding the PPA:
Once the PPA is installed, update the local package cache to include its contents:
Now that we have access to packages for PHP 7.0, we can replace the existing PHP installation.
Upgrading mod_php with Apache
mod_php with ApacheThis section describes the upgrade process for a system using Apache as the web server and mod_php to execute PHP code. If, instead, you are running Nginx and PHP-FPM, skip ahead to the next section.
First, install the new packages. This will upgrade all of the important PHP packages, with the exception of php5-mysql, which will be removed.
Note: If you have made substantial modifications to any configuration files in /etc/php5/, those files are still in place, and can be referenced. Configuration files for PHP 7.0 now live in /etc/php/7.0.
If you are using MySQL, make sure to re-add the updated PHP MySQL bindings:
Upgrading PHP-FPM with Nginx
This section describes the upgrade process for a system using Nginx as the web server and PHP-FPM to execute PHP code.
First, install the new PHP-FPM package and its dependencies:
You’ll be prompted to continue. Press Enter to complete the installation.
If you are using MySQL, be sure to re-install the PHP MySQL bindings:
Note: If you have made substantial modifications to any configuration files in /etc/php5/, those files are still in place, and can be referenced. Configuration files for PHP 7.0 now live in /etc/php/7.0.
Updating Nginx Site(s) to Use New Socket Path
Nginx communicates with PHP-FPM using a Unix domain socket. Sockets map to a path on the filesystem, and our PHP 7 installation uses a new path by default:
| PHP 5 | PHP 7 |
|---|---|
| /var/run/php5-fpm.sock | /var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock |
Open the default site configuration file with nano (or your editor of choice):
Your configuration may differ somewhat. Look for a block beginning with location ~ \.php$ {, and a line that looks something like fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;. Change this to use unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock.
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
root /var/www/html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name server_domain_name_or_IP;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Exit and save the file. In nano, you can accomplish this by pressing Ctrl-X to exit, y to confirm, and Enter to confirm the filename to overwrite.
You should repeat this process for any other virtual sites defined in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled which need to support PHP.
Now we can restart nginx:
Testing PHP
With a web server configured and the new packages installed, we should be able to verify that PHP is up and running. Begin by checking the installed version of PHP at the command line:
OutputPHP 7.0.0-5+deb.sury.org~trusty+1 (cli) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.6-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2015, by Zend Technologies
You can also create a test file in the web server’s document root. Depending on your server and configuration, this may be one of:
/var/www/html/var/www//usr/share/nginx/html
Using nano, open a new file called info.php in the document root. By default, on Apache, this would be:
On Nginx, you might instead use:
Paste the following code:
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Exit the editor, saving info.php. Now, load the following address in your browser:
http://server_domain_name_or_IP/info.php
You should see PHP version and configuration info for PHP 7. Once you’ve double-checked this, it’s safest to to delete info.php:
Conclusion
You now have a working PHP 7 installation. From here, you may want to check out Erika Heidi’s Getting Ready for PHP 7 blog post, and look over the official migration guide.
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Doesn’t work for me on Ubuntu 14.04.3 & Nginx 1.9.7…
I’ve added the PPA and updated the package cache, but got this when trying to install php7.0-fpm:
apt-get install php7.0-fpm
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
php7.0-fpm : Depends: php7.0-cli but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-common (>= 7.0.0-6+deb.sury.org~trusty+1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-json but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-opcache but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
I tried to install them all, but I keep getting more dependencies and conflicts
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
php7.0-cli : Recommends: php-readline but it is not installable
Breaks: php5-cli but 5.5.30+dfsg-1+deb.sury.org~trusty+1 is to be installed
php7.0-common : Conflicts: php5-common but 5.5.30+dfsg-1+deb.sury.org~trusty+1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
@bojanrnr i had same issue but i used the following command to remove PHP 5.6 first
sudo apt-get -y purge php5
I can get PHP 7 running on Ubuntu 14.04 with Nginx, but I can’t get phpmyadmin installed even using the latest version because php-gettext and php-seclib are missing from the PHP 7 install. HAs anyone gotten phpmyadmin to work and willing to post directions?
Got the following error after installing php7.0-mcrypt. Anyone have a solution?
PHP Warning: Module 'mcrypt' already loaded in Unknown on line 0
Thank you for writing this article.
I’m getting a 500 error code after following the tutorial with a LAMP on Ubuntu 14.04. Replicated every step perfectly but it seems like PHP7 and MySQL won’t work together. Any ideas?
I have just tested this and it refuses to work for me and just goes around in circles with unmet dependencies.
Trying to run this:
sudo apt-get install php7.0
Results in:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
php7.0 : Depends: libapache2-mod-php7.0 (>= 7.0.1-2+deb.sury.org~wily+1~) but it is not going to be installed or
php7.0-cgi (>= 7.0.1-2+deb.sury.org~wily+1~) but it is not going to be installed or
php7.0-fpm (>= 7.0.1-2+deb.sury.org~wily+1~) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-common (= 7.0.1-2+deb.sury.org~wily+1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
So then I try to install libapache2-mod-php7.0 and get a different unmet dependency:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libapache2-mod-php7.0 : Depends: php7.0-cli but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-common (= 7.0.1-2+deb.sury.org~wily+1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-json but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-opcache but it is not going to be installed
Conflicts: libapache2-mod-php5filter but 5.6.11+dfsg-1ubuntu3.1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
Then finally I try to go back one more stage and install php7.0-cli but this also doesn’t work due to unmet dependencies:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
php7.0-cli : Depends: php7.0-common (= 7.0.1-2+deb.sury.org~wily+1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-json but it is not going to be installed
Depends: php7.0-opcache but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: php-readline but it is not going to be installed
Breaks: php5-cli but 5.6.11+dfsg-1ubuntu3.1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
If I instead try to purge PHP5 first then it removes Roundcube and PHPMyAdmin and they refuse to install again afterwards due to missing modules.
Is there anything else I can try?
Thanks Robin
I am getting on Apache installation
service apache2 restart
- Restarting web server apache2 [fail]
- The apache2 configtest failed. Output of config test was: apache2: Syntax error on line 140 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Syntax error on line 1 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.load: Cannot load /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so into server: /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Action ‘configtest’ failed. The Apache error log may have more information.
This comment has been deleted
Brennen, could you please change the repositories to ppa:ondrej/php, I will deprecate ppa:ondrej/php-7.0 repository at some point in time as it contains exactly the same PHP 7.0 packages as ppa:ondrej/php.
A PPA is easier of course, but I have resolved a lot of issues to build PHP 7 and configure it on Ubuntu 15.04 and 15.10 if you decide to upgrade from 14.04.
You may need to choose a particular release branch and run the script instead of building right from master.
I’m using Ubuntu. After installing php7.0, server stopped parsing php files. From cli I can run php, but when I run a script from http://XX.XX.XX.XX/info.php I get only "<?php phpinfo(); ?> "
When I run phpinfo from cli, it shows smth like
PHP Version => 7.0.3-3+deb.sury.org~trusty+1
System =>XXXX 3.13.0-57-generic #95-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jun 19 09:28:15 UTC 2015 x86_64 Server API => Command Line Interface Virtual Directory Support => disabled Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /etc/php/7.0/cli Loaded Configuration File => /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini Scan this dir for additional .ini files => /etc/php/7.0/cli/conf.d Additional .ini files parsed => /etc/php/7.0/cli/conf.d/10-opcache.ini, /etc/php/7.0/cli/conf.d/20-json.ini, /etc/php/7.0/cli/conf.d/20-readline.ini…
So, how can I make the server to parse php files by outside, from http://XX.XX.XX.XX/info.php ?
Thanks
Thank you for the article.
I had to also run sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php7.0 before I got this to work in apache, nginx did work with without any prolems
I installed PHP 7 on Apache prior removing PHP 5.6.
Creating config file /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini with new version
ERROR: php5 module already enabled, not enabling PHP 7.0
$ php -v
yield php 7 version, on browser’s phpinfo(), I got php 5.6. So I removed PHP 5.6, and then executed:
$ sudo a2enmod php7.0 && sudo service apache2 restart
I installed PHP 7.0.3 this way, then I installed php-pear to install some extensions. Upon calling pear or pecl I’d get a long list of errors, all related to the XML extension not being enabled, even though that extension is enabled by default.
How come XML is disabled? Do you have any source with XML enabled? Or any ideas how i can get that working? Migrating a few of my web apps went fine, however XML support is missing :(
@asb isnt the 7.0.4 current stable version? is it safe to install 7.0.4 or should i stick to 7.0?
can i simply install the latest stable by the following command?
sudo apt-get install php7.0.4
Hi there, and thanks for the tutorial. I have upgraded mine droplet to php 7, and so far so good. After upgrade I bumped into a problem: Error 502.
- PHP 7.0.4
- Ubuntu 14.04.
- Nginx 1.9.6
I figured out that php7.0-fpm.sock in my installation ended up in: /var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock (instead of /var/run/php7.0-fpm.sock like suggested in tutorial)
So I fixed my path in nginx.conf
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
After I updated my path in server block, I got error:
*143 connect() to unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock failed (13: Permission denied) ...
So I updated permissions to sudo chmod 666 /var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock, and now everything works
So my question here is about the permissions, is this ok to have it 666? Or anyone could suggest some better solution to my problem.
And one more thing, php folder in /var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock is ownde by www-data:
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 80 Mar 14 13:41 php
Should it be owned by root, like all others in same folder?
Thanks in advanced
Edit:
- have chowned php dir to
sudo chown -R nginx:nginx php/which is mine nginx user, and restored permissions to 0644 for /var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock
Again everything works
When running php -v in my DO terminal, I get PHP 7.0.4, but when I run phpinfo() on my site, it’s still PHP 5.5. And also I cannot run a2enmod php7.0, it says that the module does not exist.
I am using Apache & Ubuntu 14.04.
Does someone know what’s wrong?
Thanks in advance.
Hi! I followed this tutorial and my PHP7 + nginx + php-fpm install is working like a charm… But how can I install the curl package? I tried:
sudo apt-get install php7.0-curl
But I get these messages:
almir@Siteecia:~$ sudo apt-get install php7.0-curl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
php7.0-curl
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 151 not upgraded.
Need to get 26.6 kB of archives.
After this operation, 154 kB of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
php7.0-curl
Install these packages without verification? [y/N] y
Err http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php-7.0/ubuntu/ trusty/main php7.0-curl amd64 7.0.3-5+deb.sury.org~trusty+1
404 Not Found
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php-7.0/ubuntu/pool/main/p/php7.0/php7.0-curl_7.0.3-5+deb.sury.org~trusty+1_amd64.deb 404 Not Found
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?
What can I do?
Thanks!
Guys check out this video tutorial about the topic. It’s really clean a straight to the point. Link : Here
Have a good day.
Hello,
I upgraded php version using this tutorial. Before upgrading I was using redis. Should I now update php configuration files accordingly? or everything already working?
After upgrading to PHP 7.0 on my Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” (Ubuntu 14.04.3) successfully, i tried restarting Apache as it still was telling me to use the PHP 5.5.9 package… Well, it didn’t restart and i can’t get it started… but PHP 7.0 runs well in terminal (and when using “screen” to run a self-written PHP IRC bot)
I created a brand new LAMP droplet, followed these instructions, php7 works for cli but not the web server. Does anyone have an idea what I am missing?
Hello, I use LEMP stack on Ubuntu 14.04, after edit this file ‘sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mydomain’, my wordpress site is white at all. Please help! Thanks ^_^
This guide doesn’t work at all. I booted up a fresh LAMP droplet and followed these instructions with the result that info.php still read PHP5. Hmm…
on apache2 you need also to run this bash command:
sudo a2enmod php7.0
to enable the php7 module
I have just successfully upgraded two servers Ubuntu 14.04 with Apache, but with a third running NGINX i get the following error: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘php-7.0-fpm’
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php OK apt-get update OK apt-get upgrade OK apt-get install php7.0-fpm FAIL
Any ideas
Thanks Richard
Informative, organized, and no filler. This article rocks! Thank You Brennen.
Quick question, should I concern guard against HTTProxy vulnerability?
oh yea, everything is working great. Bye Bye Forge…maybe
smooth! thanks !
just want to mention, if anyone try to change .ini file and not working (for me was set the short_open_tag=on) , try to start php-fpm not just nginx
cheers
This comment has been deleted
Hi I am facing the issue, phpinfo() and php -v shows different version after Upgrade to PHP 7 . Please help me to resolve that problem.
This comment has been deleted
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