PHP Setup

Debian / Ubuntu

Fedora / Rocky / RHEL

Overview

Install PHP for web applications on a Linux server.

Assumptions

• Initial System Setup completed.

• Logged in as administrative user.

Update

Before getting started, update package repositories and apply upgrades for the latest patches.

# Debian
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

# Fedora
sudo dnf check-update
sudo dnf upgrade

Install PHP

The PHP version included in default package repositories used to be significantly outdated, this is no longer true.

A third party repository can be optionally used for the most recent version. For Debian distributions this will be the Ondřej Surý PPA, and for Fedora distros this will be the Remi repository.

Debian

Verify that the required packages software-properties-common and apt-transport-https are installed.

sudo apt install software-properties-common apt-transport-https

Some systems may require the python3-launchpadlib package.

Add the ondrej/php PPA to the system sources.

# Debian
sudo curl -sSLo /usr/share/keyrings/deb.sury.org-php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/deb.sury.org-php.gpg] https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list'

# Ubuntu
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Update package sources and install PHP. The latest PHP release will be installed by default. To install a specific version, append the version number: php8.3 php7.4.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php

Fedora

Verify that the required package dnf-utils is installed.

sudo dnf install dnf-utils

Add the remirepo.net repository to the system sources.

sudo dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

Select the latest version of PHP, or the version required by your application. View available module versions using dnf module list php.

sudo dnf module enable php:remi-8.1

Install the selected PHP version.

sudo dnf check-update
sudo dnf install php

PHP Configuration

Configure PHP with the php.ini files found in the /etc/php/8.3/ directory, where 8.3 is the current version of PHP the system is using.

Determine the current PHP version with the php -v command. Get a list of all additional PHP configuration files in use with php --ini.

Depending on system applications and modules installed, multiple configuration directories will be available. For example to modify the Apache or CLI configurations:

sudo nano /etc/php/8.3/apache2/php.ini

sudo nano /etc/php/8.3/cli/php.ini

PHP Extensions

Refer to the PHP Manual Extension List for available packages. To install an extension, install the system package with the naming scheme php-extensionname.

# Debian
sudo apt install php-openssl

# Fedora
sudo dnf install php-openssl

Common Dependencies

Common packages required to integrate PHP with other applications.

Apache

# Debian
sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php

Nginx

# Debian
sudo apt install php-fpm

# Fedora
sudo dnf install php-fpm

MariaDB / MySQL

# Debian
sudo apt install php-mysql

# Fedora
sudo dnf install php-mysqlnd

References

^{1 2 3 4 5 6}